CLAMART (92) 05.11.2022

At 22:42 on 5 November 2022, a witness at home in Clamart saw unusual light activity in the cloudy sky. Round-to-oval patches resembling reflections formed a triangle and moved regularly back and forth, like ping-pong, continuously at moderate speed, before meeting in one central circle. This lasted about 2 minutes; the light shapes then remained still for at least 1 hour. Only 1 account was collected. GEIPAN assessed the evidential strength as good: the witness completed a questionnaire and provided good-quality photographs and video; see the investigation report. The investigation concluded that the witness very probably saw patches of light on low cloud produced by ground-based single-beam searchlights, known as “skyrose”. GEIPAN explains that these lights generally have a range of more than 10 km. They can be controlled automatically or manually and produce fixed or moving beams, independently or together, with luminous flux up to about 240,000 lumens. Their sweeping motion matches the witness's description; the source refers to images on the JMSkytracers website. The supporting features were the round-to-oval shapes, whitish-blue colour, silence, ping-pong-like sweeping movements, low cloud and Saturday-night timing. The witness found 2 aspects strange. First, no beam was visible. GEIPAN attributed this to the absence of precipitation at the time, explaining that there was consequently no visible beam in the air. Second, the phenomenon remained motionless for at least 1 hour. GEIPAN suggested that the light display could temporarily have been stopped for adjustments, or that movement had ended before the lights were switched off. GEIPAN classified the case A: very probable observation of light patches on cloud from ground-based single-beam searchlights.