BREUIL-MAGNE (17) 28.07.2024

On the evening of 28 July 2024, a witness in an apartment in Breuil-Magné (Charente-Maritime, 17) saw an incandescent ball. He estimated its altitude at 300 m and its distance at 500 m–1 km. It moved rapidly along a horizontal path without audible sound and appeared as a luminous sphere surrounded by what the account describes as a slight thermal halo. The witness filmed it on a mobile phone, zooming in slightly to capture more detail. As it moved, its light gradually faded and it emitted black smoke. It became completely dark but continued along the same trajectory. The observation ended when it disappeared behind house roofs to the witness's right. GEIPAN assesses the strangeness as low and the evidential support as good: one witness, but a video of the UAP. Under its criteria, evidential support is the amount of information considered reliable and objectively established that has been collected for an account. GEIPAN finds the description and visual features entirely consistent with a sky lantern. A lantern's burner typically goes out after a few minutes of flight, with the visible object changing from yellow to black and emitting a little smoke. The source links to the “Lanternes célestes” page on Méprises du ciel for comparable examples. The apparent trajectory also matches the wind direction measured at the time. Investigators could not establish where the lantern had been released (see the investigation report). GEIPAN classifies the case A: observation of a sky lantern carried by the wind.