News -> Home
Cette page en français

News and observation reports, June 2010:

UFOs claims in Nancy, France.

On June 28, 2010, the newspaper L'Est Republican talks about "Intriguing lights" seen by a couple of Laxou (suburbs of Nancy, the Meurthe-and-Moselle, France) who is puzzled to have seen ten orange luminous spots "in the night from Saturday to Sunday", therefore between June 26 and 27, 2010, little after midnight.

They said: "The phenomenon occurred on the level of the hill of the CHU [Hospital] and my companion and I had never seen anything like it".

"We were so amazed that we did not think of taking photographs or film. It lasted three or four minutes. The lights, very sharp, were immobilized one moment, very high in the sky before disappearing. There was no noise. I would like to know if other people observed these lights."

See: http://www.estrepublicain.fr/fr/l-est-en-lorraine/nancy-et-ses-environs/24-heures-meurthe-et-moselle/info/3396552-Intrigantes-lumieres-dans-le-ciel-de-Nancy

While "UFO websites" present thus without seeking possible explanations, a witness who saw it at the beginning of the month comments on: "Weird but it must have a very simple explanation...."

Of course, the description is just like a description of Chinese lanterns.

Interestingly, there was a launch of Chinese lanterns not far, within the Mondial Paramoteurs 2010 in Basse Ham. Better still, in addition to the Chinese lanterns, there were flights of planes, from the Patrouille de France military aerobatics team, helicopters, hot air balloons, flares drops using parachutes, and obviously motorized parachutes, enough to generate various observations with various descriptions.

See: http://www.lorraineaucoeur.com/modules/compte/event.php?eventid=4296

Luminous balls in the Country of Gex, France.

The website of the newspaper "Le Dauphiné Libéré" wonders: "Did UFOs fly over the marshes of Bidonnes?", since in this area of the Country of Gex on Saturday, June 19, 2010 towards 11:30 p.m., from the Charmeraie, a score of young people gathered outside reportedly saw "luminous balls who went up in the sky".

One of the witnesses is quoted saying "We saw ten incandescent balls, which danced, a little as if they moved on Russian mountains above the marsh of Bidonnes." "They appeared larger than soccer balls to us. And the more they went up in the sky, the less they were luminous." "The phenomenon lasted approximately five minutes". "Nobody else talked about it, but it was very surprising and especially strange".

This witness reported his sighting to the gendarmerie.

As often, the content of the newspaper report cruelly misses essential information like angular sizes, angular elevation, duration of the movements, with the result that you could think of the usual Chinese latners, or to military jets in maneuvers, but also of some will-o'-the-wisps since this apparently happens on a marsh.

Voir: www.ledauphine.com/ain/2010/08/18/des-ovnis-ont-ils-survole-les-marais-des-bidonnes

No Chinese lanterns sold in Belgium?

On a web forum section designed to publish testimonys of UFO sightings, a chap under the pseudonym "Actarus" published his report and a video he shot thinking it was UFOs, seen on June 12, 2010 around 11 p.m. in Belgium.

For once, on this forum, other participants did not fail to think of the most forthcoming explanation: Chinese lanterns.

"Acturus" rejects the explanation, saying among other things that chinese lanterns are not sold in Belgium like they are in France.

This is false: the main resellers sell over the web, and thus there is no European country where you cannot buy Chinese lanterns.

The witness is also surprised that the things were "red" - in fact yellow-orange, whereas he had seen white ones in an earlier sighting. The color depends on lighting. In the dark night the lanterns indeed generally have an overall orange color, in daylight they give the impression to be white. In addition, some less current lanterns, especially those made house with paper of color, have other colors that the majority of them, and the commercial lanterns are more and more often colored now (blue, green, etc...).

The video is very interesting and it is a good thing it was made and shared. One can see that with the heavy zooming the nearest lantern strongly saturates the camera sensor and thus appears roundish, whereas another lantern appears much less luminous and more lengthened vertically, almost rectangular: it must be more distant, its light does not saturate the camera, and its quasi rectangular form (cylindrical, vertical, the shape these lanterns generally have) is thus visible.

See: http://www.objetvolant.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&&p=10781#10781

Web shops selling Chinese lanterns:
http://www.skylantern.fr (France, note the choice of colors and low cost, 11 euros for 10 lanterns).
http://www.skylanterns.ch (Switzerland)
http://www.thaiskylanterns.com (Thailand, 40 USD for 50 lanterns.)
http://www.ufo-balloons.com (explicitely say they sell in Belgium)
http://www.indreams.eu/webshop/catalog/index_ufoballoons.php?cPath=21 (Sells "UFO balloons" in Belgium)
http://shopping.cherchons.com/be/dossier/lanterne-de-jardin.html (Sells in Belgium).

I remind that a ufologist colleague informed in 2008 that the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad stated that during year 2007, the company Van Dasler (www.ufo-balloons.com) sold via the Internet no less than 45.000 Thai lanterns including export in particular on Europe and obviously including France, Belgium etc. This was in 2007 already.

Talks of UFOs in Sorrente, Italy.

On June 11, 2010, an Italian web portal talks about a "UFO sighting" in Sorrente, without giving the date and with very sparse information.

A short comment allotted to a witness strongly resembles a description of a Chinese lantern, and seems to show a weak knowledge of the sky since the witness reportedly compared the thing to a meteor which would have been "slow".

An apparent strangeness of the story is that "the UFO" reportedly left behind "a gray mass", but an image (below) probably extracted from a video and enlarged can explain that: what appears here could be quite simply the remanence of the Chinese lantern rather than "a gray mass".

See: http://www.sorrentoedintorni.it/1647-ancora-avvistamenti-ufo-a-sorrento.html

Lanterns or UFO above Vatican:

An Italian TV news report and some newspapers reported about "UFOs above Vatican" in Italy on June 7, 2010. Three security guards saw them and filmed them in video.

Both the report and the video show what looks like Chinese lanterns, currently the number 1 cause for so-called UFO sightings. This case was of course heavily publicized as an important "UFO sighting" on incompetennt websites and web forums, without any investigation and of course no mention of Chinese lanterns.

See for example: http://www.openminds.tv/vatican-ufo-film

Lanterns or UFO above London, U-K:

An anonymous chap claimed that on June 6, 2010, "three orb like ufo's were spotted hovering just after sun down in the croydon area of south london. Black rounded tops could be seen with the naked eye as they hovered within 10 meters of rooftops near local houses. The footage was filmed on a hand camcorder between 21:46 and 22:05 06/06/2010. Triangular formation of the orbs being held with no apparent influence from the wind. refuting the idea 'they could be lanterns'."

See the video at: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdlhy0_triangle-formation-hovering-over-lo_tech

The report is at http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/2010/06/orbs-in-triangle-formation-were-filmed.html

People who want to believe often fail to realize that they do not know exactly the wind condition at a given place in the sky, that there can be no wind in the sky though some places on the ground do have some wind, that even weather sounding balloons data cannot exclude different local wind conditions.

What the video appears to show looks like Chinese lanterns.

Jean-Pierre Rospars organizes UFO workshop, in Paris.

"Jean-Pierre Rospars, doctor science in neurobiology, director of research, is the author of 70 articles published in professional journals (such as Journal of Neuroscience, PLoS Computational Biology etc.) and of many communications in international congresses. His work in neurobiology falls under a broader research on the evolution of life and thought. He is member of the Société Française d'Exobiologie. From 1977 to 1983, he was a collaborator of the group of study of the unidentified aerospace phenomena at the CNES, for which he made several studies, and since 2006 he is member of the College of Experts of the GEIPAN. In 2007, he summarized some of his ideas on the UFO topic in a article, published in the Belgian review Inforespace, titled 'A failure of science?'".

He will present a workshop about UFOs, saying (my translation):

"It is now more than 60 years that one talks about UFOs. The subject surface again from time to time and each time the question arises: is there something serious there? I will tackle this question without a priori, not to give it a peremptory answer but, more modestly, to try to better pose it. I will take initially as example a personal investigation to concretely illustrate the way in which the problem arises and the tentative conclusions to which one can legitimately arrive. I will then take a broader look to try to show the conditions of a scientific study of the subject and to specify the objections and obstacles against such study."

The workshop wikll take place one Friday, June 11, 2010, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
at the headquarters of the IMI, 51 rue de l'Aqueduc, 75010 Paris.
Subway: Stalingrad or Louis Blanc.
Price: normal: 9€; A-IMI members: 6€ (membership card to be shown).
Reservations: none

See: http://www.metapsychique.org/Workshops-2009-2010.html#wjuin

Orange lights called UFOs again in Italy.

This time it is the website of newspaper Il Mattino which tells on June 13, 2010, with little scientifically useful details an observation in Recale on June 10, 2010, in middle of the night of the usual "orange lights".

Neither the newspaper no the questioned ufologist and philosopher seem to realize the existence of the infamous Chinese lanterns whereas the report looks like this was it. Of course the affair is publicized as is without further thinking on supposedly ufological websites.

See: http://www.ilmattino.it/articolo.php?id=106329&sez=CAMPANIA

Chinese lanterns called UFOs, on Paris, France.

It is being told on web forums that on June 5, 2010 in the evening, "several hundreds of people" saw "a quite weird appearance in the sky of Paris, but also everywhere in France. "

"At about 11:10 p.m., a formation of unidentified craft (abouts [sic] ten) was seen, coming from the South, after a short stop, to leave towards the west. Incandescent verging on the orange red, without flickering, stronger white light during displacement."

This is accompanied by a video published on Youtube, which show what strongly resembles Chinese lanterns:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW2dSQwTJW8&feature=player_embedded

The comment of the video by the anonymous person who published it also strongly resembles a description of chinese lanterns:

"There were lights above Paris (France) saturdays June 5, 2010. I counted 9 of them in the whole, which moved slowly in the sky. It was 23:11."

"Their light scintillated like the light of a candle, and changed colors very quickly. It was very beautiful. When they left, their light looked the same, not flashing lights, not stable light, not flashes."

"They were truely [sic] not helictopters [sic] neither planes nor drones, but it was like silent balls of light which emitted a light of candle."

Lanternes thaïlandaises sur Nancy, France.

One "EvErNaSh" published his Chinese lanternes video on Youtube with the title "strange phenomenon seen in Nancy on 06/05/10" and no other precisions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzBX8lNxMjA&feature=player_embedded

Because Chinese lanterns were also spotted elsewhere and called "UFOs" that night, some incompetent web forums ufologists believe this is a "UFO flap" over France.

So-called "spiralling UFO in Australia - will they ever learn?

Media in Australia say scores of people from South Australia, NSW, Queenland and Victoria in Australia have been stunned to see "what appears to be an unidentified flying object flying across the sky." "It was described as a swirling light that moved from east to west across the sky for several minutes just before sunrise."

Many people took pictures of actually wasn't a "UFO".

See for example: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glance/1064452/spiralling-ufo-over-australia

Many "UFO" websites readily promoted it as a UFO sighting, saying nothing of the ordinary explanation.

The "thing" they saw and photograph is actually the Falcon 9 rocket.

In December 2009 already, a so-called "spiraling UFO" hit the media news and the UFO websites, who claimed it was a major UFO sighting, "unexplained", when it also was actually just a spiraling rocket.

U-K Space Agency announces ExoMars mission.

University of Leicester scientists have announced the start of work, in collaboration with industry, on advanced instruments for ExoMars, a new mission to Mars in 2018, including a Mars rover called "Bridget".

Scientists from the University of Leicester are involved in five instruments on board the ExoMars mission, including building the hardware for three of the instruments on board the craft. The mission is one of the key missions under the remit of the newly formed UK Space Agency.

ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) is a European-led robotic mission to Mars, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, a part of ESA's Aurora programme for robotic exploration of the Solar System and its aim is to further characterise the chemical, geological and possible biological environment on Mars in preparation for robotic missions and then human exploration.

The ExoMars instruments have been funded to date by the Science and Technology Facilities Council; funding of the flight instruments will be via the UK Space Agency.

Talks of UFO sightings in Colombia.

A website says "Strange things" are occurring in the central Colombian department of Boyaca, where several residents have spotted "unidentified flying objects in the night skies", according to a Caracol report.

According to reports by local residents, UFO sightings are becoming a common occurrence in the area, particularly in the western regions of Combita, Motavita and Tunja.

Boyaca residents say the sightings have been going on for many months now, that they are baffled by "the mysterious airborne objects", that they wonder where they have come from, thinking that maybe "the lights belong to other-worldly creatures", or are extraterrestrial aircraft, or according to Combita resident Nury Gamarra, they are "divine ships coming for their chosen ones."

Unfortunately the report is devoid of any useable information that would allow interpretation attempt.

See: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news-lite/97-news/10059-ufos-spotted-in-central-colombia.html

Feedback  |  Top  |  Back  |  Forward  |  Map  |  List |  Home

This page was last updated on August 25, 2010