A busy sky with bright red Mars rising east of the Milky Way

A busy sky with bright red Mars rising east of the Milky Way, while a pair of Iridium satellites flare briefly as they travel in unison up along the Milky Way from south to north Meanwhile, about 20 minutes later a very bright meteor flared and produced a lasting train of “smoke”, seen at left and composited in from two later frames – but with it located where it appeared, above Mars But to be clear — the meteor did not appear at the same time as the Iridiums Nevertheless, this captures the fact that there were a lot of satellites and meteors this night, on a very clear though short summer night It was a busy sky! The Iridium trails come from 5 exposures masked and layered onto a single base image of the sky, to minimize star trailing I say they are Iridiums as they have all the hallmark of such, but no Iridium flares were predicted for this time and position, so they could be another pair of satellites But they do seem like Iridiums and these will be among the last such flares, as by year end the first generation of flaring Iridiums will have been de-orbited, replaced by a new style of satellite whose design does not produce flares So “Flare-well” Iridiums! Each exposure was 30 seconds at f/28 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and the Nikon D750 at ISO 3200 They were taken as part of a 200-frame time-lapse Taken from home in Alberta on July 9-10, 2018 as part of some technique testing. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images)