*Exceptionally* vivid, bright starry night in South Dublin tonight ('morning' of Sep 29) - why?

hatrickpatrick

Just wondering does anyone know what particular atmospheric conditions are giving rise to such an exceptionally bright starscape tonight? I feel like I haven't seen the sky this clear or vivid in years. I live in Dun Laoghaire which is a very lit up area at night and generally while you do get good night skies, you don't get anything even remotely on this level. If you told me I'd been kidnapped and brought into the Wicklow mountains tonight, I wouldn't have a moment's hesitation in believing you.

To compare this with more recent episodes of clear skies, during the epic summer heatwave we just had during the second half of July 2021, we had clear skies every single night, and they were spectacular in their own right - but there was nowhere near this level of contrast, a jet-black sky and bright, vibrant specs of glitter dotted all over it. It feels like where one can ordinarily see the big landmark stars and constellations such as the Plough, Orion etc, one can see all of those and dozens of smaller, fainter stars which would usually be entirely out of the question for seeing in a lit-up Dublin suburb.

What gives? No power outages around here that I know of in case anyone suggests this as a possibility. One thing that's on my mind is the fact that the nights are longer now than in the summer, so perhaps this also makes the middle of the night somewhat darker as we're facing away from the sun at a more extreme angle during night time than we were a couple of months ago?

Massive Berevement

I've experienced this before and if I remember rightly it was after a thunderstorm and the reason for it is that the rain and winds cleared dust from the atmosphere which you would normally be looking through