Clear nights

With the recent spell of clear weather it's been nice to see some of the summer milky way. Sky transparency was particularly good on Tuesday night between 1 and 3am, with clarity right down to the southern horizon.

Several unusual events that night were a very bright Iridium flare at around 2.15am, some very bright meteors with long ionisation trails and something (which I didn't actually see as I was fiddling with my camera at the time) that lit up my whole observatory with a reddish glow! No idea what that was.

Attached is a picture of M20, Triffid Nebula, taken through my EOS300D at prime focus of 6" f/5 refractor. The exposure is a combination of 11 x 2 minute exposures (unguided) combined with ImagesPlus and processed in Photoshop and NeatImage. This was literally just above the hedge line, so I was surprised that it came out as clear as it has.

Jerry