SAINT-RAPHAEL (83) 14.05.2024

On 14 May 2024 at 23:30, 2 witnesses walking their dog on the corniche d’Agay above Saint-Raphaël saw a very bright white oval beneath the clouds to the north-west. The source title places Saint-Raphaël in department 83, while its narrative says 06. A thick white luminous line extended diagonally downwards from the oval. After a few seconds the UAP moved rapidly south, immediately returned and stopped. The first witness heard no sound. The sighting lasted about 10 minutes. When they perceived it moving towards them, they began running home. GEIPAN assesses the evidential strength as excellent. Only 1 witness completed a questionnaire, but it was very detailed and written the next day. Videos from 2 webcams clearly show the UAP and helped identify it (see the investigation report). GEIPAN defines evidential strength as the quantity of reliable, objectively supported information collected for an account. The investigation finds a powerful skytracker very probable: an outdoor single- or multiple-beam searchlight with a 180° sweeping system, likely operated privately from a villa in a locality of Bagnols-en-Forêt. The oval shape and white colour are typical, and low clouds allowed light from the ground to form a visible patch on their undersides. Rapid movement matches a ground-mounted skytracker’s capabilities. Archived surveillance footage from Fréjus and Puget-sur-Argens confirms a skytracker in the viewing direction at the sighting time. Municipal-camera images show a characteristic beam whose visibility varies with cloud and humidity. The beam’s ground position and its illuminated patch on the cloud base agree across the 3 sources: the direct witness evidence and footage from both cameras. Precise bearings converge on an area at the southern edge of Bagnols-en-Forêt’s inhabited districts, about 20 km from the witnesses. The municipality investigated after being contacted but could not determine the skytracker’s origin. GEIPAN classifies the case A: very certain observation of a skytracker.