PARIS (75) 26.09.2024

On 26 September 2024 in Paris (75), a witness went down into his residential courtyard and, at 21:16, saw an apparently stationary blue halo in the sky toward the northeast of the capital. The sighting lasted a few seconds, less than 1 minute in all. He photographed it with his smartphone, taking 2 identical pictures, one bearing a timestamp. Although the halo appeared high up, its precise shape and size could not be determined. The glow was slightly unstable, seeming to vibrate while remaining in place, before moving sideways very rapidly to the right and disappearing almost instantly eastward. The narrative says he managed a final photograph just before it disappeared; the investigation records receipt of 2 photographs in total. The inquiry rests on this single account. GEIPAN judges the evidential strength good, having received a complete Technical Questionnaire and 2 photographs of the UAP. Under its criteria, evidential strength is the amount of information collected for an account that is considered reliable and objectively substantiated. The retained hypothesis is a sky-tracer, a powerful searchlight aimed into the sky. GEIPAN bases this on the blue color, which is common for such lights; the established cloud cover, visible in the witness's photograph and recorded as 7/8 cloud cover in the MétéoCiel database, providing a surface to reflect the powerful beam; and the initial stationary appearance followed by sudden acceleration in one direction without apparent sound, consistent with moving a ground-based searchlight. This explanation reduces the perceived unusualness. However, GEIPAN found neither public information nor information obtained during its site visit locating a sky-tracer at the time of the sighting. L'Atelier des Lumières lay along the line of sight, and an employee was questioned, but this did not establish the source. GEIPAN classifies the case as B: probable observation of a sky-tracer.