Out to the Flint Hills on Monday 4.20 to view the Lyrids. While this was one day earlier than the peak it was the only night the weather was going to cooperate for days. I was a bit surprised to see a few areas still being burned.
No matter as I could tell the north wind would blow any low level smoke away and the burning was pretty minimal. I’ve seen worse here.
What I had not seen in well over a year was the night sky from Teterville. Once the sun set and the sky was dark enough the spring zodiacal light appeared. The photo above has Venus shining bright right in the middle of the zodiacal light. The light pollution in the photo is worse from the low level smoke. Note right under Venus is a red glow from a distant part of the hills on fire.
When full darkness arrived the sky overhead was spectacular. It had been many, many months since I saw a truly dark sky. I sat for hours simply enjoying its beauty.
About midnight I started to prepare for meteor observations but wouldn’t you know some clouds slide by. An hour and a half later, after a brief power nap, I restarted meteor observing. Activity was rather low but this was expected. Unfortunately the prime last hour or so before darkness ended started to get a bit cloudy so I stopped. You can see my report I filed with the IMO here : https://www.imo.net/members/imo_vmdb/view?session_id=80235