IRANIAN MYSTERY CLOUD

On June 15th, sky watchers around Iran witnessed a strange and luminous cloud in the night sky. "I have never experienced a similar phenomena," reports veteran astronomer Babak A. Tafreshi of Tehran. Observing alongside two other astronomers, Oshin Zakarian and Pouria Nazemi, he took this picture:

"The object started out patchy, shapeless and dim; it quickly brightened and formed a blue-tinted cone with a nose of magnitude -2 or -3," he says. The cloud raced across the sky "moving about 20 degrees per minute." More images: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6.