I live pretty far out in the country and a few planes are expected at night. Here is what happened tonight.
The sky was exceptionally clear, no moon, no clouds. Perfect for astronomy.
I go out and set up and see thousands of stars. Planes flying around are not that uncommon. But I started noticing a little more than usual and that
they were circling my area. Some you could hear, they were pretty low and flying sorta slow. The others were higher up and they were moving really
fast, but you could not hear any of them. I'm not good with airplanes but the ones that were flying low were not jets like f16s or anything. The
higher one could of been anything.
About 20 minutes later I see two bright flashes in the sky that lit up a large portion of the eastern sky and it resembled lightning.
Problem is there were only two flashes (bright like lightning), there were absolutley no clouds in the sky, and no thunder followed. Rest of the night
out was normal. Only a couple of planes here and there but not as many as earlier.
What are some of your theories of these bright flashes? The airplanes probably had nothing to do with it and there is also a nuclear power plant in
the same area as those flashes.
The thing that really makes me mad was i was trying to spot a galaxy in that area and a bright flash to the eye through a telescope can render you
useless for a while....luckily i wasnt looking through the scope at the time, i was just getting done with pointing it in the right direction, a few
seconds later and maybe it would have been painful
