MARON (36) 28.05.2023

On 28 May 2023 at about 16:00, T1 and T2 saw 2 UAPs over Mâron (36). One was dark and round to oval; the other was black, long and thin. They appeared low, descending and swaying slightly. The witnesses interrupted their observations to fetch a phone from inside their home. The sighting lasted approximately 1 minute 30 seconds, with 1 photograph taken before the objects were lost from view. GEIPAN found good evidential support: the photograph allowed some IPACO measurements, the 2 accounts were dependent but the witnesses remained available and highly cooperative, and remote and on-site inquiries obtained angular sizes, elevations, azimuths and other useful data. GEIPAN defines evidential support as the amount of information collected for an account that is considered reliable and objectively established. Two main hypotheses were considered (see the investigation report): gliders appearing in radar tracks supplied by the French Air and Space Force's National Air Operations Centre, and balloons. The gliders quickly proved implausible because their distances and altitudes gave angular elevations unlike those reported, and their flight area did not match the observation area. Two windborne balloons fitted more features: swaying or oscillation, commercially available dark round and elongated shapes, motion with the wind, and plausible speeds at the distances considered. IPACO measurements and calculations were consistent with ordinary balloons 60–90 cm in size, approximately 300–500 m away at the end of the sighting and at altitudes of 120–180 m. GEIPAN considered the apparent rapid disappearance into cloud an illusion: at the time of the photograph, the objects were visible only through 6.45× zoom, so their subsequent invisibility to the naked eye was unsurprising. Extensive inquiries could not establish whether balloons had been lost or released nearby, for example from a hall in the direction they first appeared, decorated with balloons for a celebration that day. GEIPAN classified the case B: probable balloons.