Readers will be pleased to know that I spent the Christmas holidays monitoring the entire globe for UFO activity using the most sophisticated technology at my disposal (Google alerts). The holiday season is traditionally a time for weird shit appearing in the sky, like 1978’s Kaikoura Lights, or the Norway Spiral in 2009 (I always hear a little voice in the way-off distance screaming, “It’s a rocket!” whenever I type ‘Norway Spiral’).

Anyway, this year’s Blue Ribbon winner goes to the “cloud-forming” object tracked by multiple witnesses on December 23 above the Russian town of Trekhgorny—where, perhaps significantly, the main industry is reportedly the production of nuclear reactors.