2017-06-01 - Calais (France) - Flash

My wife and I were walking onto the beach from atop sand dunes at Bleriot Plage near Calais in Northern France. We live in Dover, England, but have a holiday home in Calais.

I started taking landscape type photos from the top of the dunes, but then noticed a twinkling light approximately 200 yards out to sea. It was small and approximately mid way between my viewpoint and the coastal village of Sangatte.

I drew my wife's attention to it and we could not understand what it was. I took my second camera with a long zoom lens and looked at it. The image seen was two orange balls, twinkling, and something connecting them, which appeared to be twinkling. At no time did the object move either up or down or in any direction.

At first my wife thought it was a light placed on top of Dover Castle, however it was the wrong direction and coastal haze prevented viability further than a few miles out to sea. The object continued to twinkle for a period of about 5 minutes.

I took a number of photographs, the object appeared to be changing shape, with the two objects seeming to merge into one, which had a distinct saucer shape. After which the object seemed to disappear.

My initial landscape photos were taken with a different camera, fitted with a wide angled lens. On studying these pictures, there appears to be a disturbance in the sky where the object appeared.

I take pictures in both jpeg and raw. The images I am sending you are jpeg images which are slightly over exposed due to the brightness of the sun. The raw files I have contain about three times the information of jpegs, these have not been touched so far.