Re: Milky Way from my backyard!

There were two nights last week when the Milky Way through Cygnus / Vul area was naked eye in Rhode Island. It got cold those two nights and around midnight the daytime slight haze broke to show a glowing sky with the great rift just standing out easily. Through binoculars the area was swarms of stars and it was difficult to distinguish some of the clusters in the area from the background. But the sky was so clear that Objects like the Dumbell-M57 and M71 in Sagitta easily stood out in binoculars. I followed Milky Way through the sky with my binoculars down to my visible southern limit and easily saw M16,M17,M18,M24,M25,M23 all down near the Oph,Scu,Sag border and nearly all in the same view.