A mys­te­ri­ous halo-shaped cloud was seen hov­er­ing in the sky over the city of Moscow a few days ago. Lest you believe that this con­firms your var­i­ous con­spir­acy the­o­ries, mete­o­rol­o­gists have ruled out any super­nat­ural cause:

A spokesman from the city’s weather fore­cast said: ‘Sev­eral fronts have been pass­ing through Moscow recently, there was an intru­sion of the Arc­tic air too, the sun was shin­ing from the west — this is how the effect was produced.‘He added: ‘This is purely an opti­cal effect, although it does look impressive.