mattbee

Thanks Steve. That Bino Bandit looks very useful.

1. Moving flashes (as in your pictures): +1 for the 'rotating satellite catching the sun' explanation. You can verify by checking satellite predictions for your location from http://www.heavens-above.com/. 2. 'Dancing' lights: not the above then. How about the usual suspects: military aircraft activity, high altitude weather ballooons? Not very original, I know... 3. On to the other flashes. Again black sky, all of sudden it's as if someone in Space has a huge camera flash and flashes it. No warning, no starting out dim. Just a flash and back to black. I have seen this probably 30 times in the past 2 years. These take place between an hour to 3 hours after Sunset. I have seen flashes at times at all hours after Sunset to Sun rise. But not many. Maybe 5 or so. So the whole sky becomes light? Distant lightning perhaps or some ground-based lights. I've seen brightening of the sky that I realized after a while was from distant searchlights.