very clear skies! (Blue Mountains)

Turned to the southern sky. Noticed a star in the tail of the scorpion. With just my eyes!

Sargas of Scorpius. It's the yellowy star in the centre of the picture, just above the distance mound of trees. And that star was, at the time, about 1 degree above the horizon!

I've never seen air that clear before!

Naked eye, I saw θ (theta) Scorpii, a magnitude 1.9 star, very close to the horizon. SkyTools said I was looking through over 13 air masses!

I wanted to coax out ζ (zeta) and η (eta) to the right but I could not visually see them. Obvious in the photo.

Canon 40D, 18-55 EF-S lens at 24, manually focused, 30 seconds, f/3.5, ISO 1600, tripod mounted, RAW, slight processing in Canon DPP, in particular, colour temp set to 3700.

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Wikipedia link: Milky Way.