h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was at home in Denmark and the date would have been either:

6 September - about 2am (after returning home from a party)
or
30 August - about 1am (after returning home from the Tønder Festival)

On each occasion - I was boringly sober!

I was standing outside my north facing front door - and looking to the East. This is on the west coast of Jutland - very close to the beach - and about an hour's drive up from the Danish/German border.

So - looking to the East - I saw up in the sky - a glowing and biggish cluster of very reddish looking stars. It was rather as if someone had thrown up into the sky - a tangle of reddish Christmas tree lights - each one twinkling - and flashing on and off at random intervals.

I looked again the following night to see if it was still there - and it was - although visibility was less good - and there was also not the same extensive blanket of stars across the sky I'd seen the night before. (The west coast of Denmark is a truly fantastic place to see the night sky.)

Does anyone have any idea what it was that I saw?

Two possibilities are the Hyades and the Pleiades. The Hyades a loose cluster in Taurus, and Aldeberan, the brighest star in Taurus, is reddish. The Pleiades are a very tight cluster and are not at all red, but maybe conditions made them look that way?

Both would have been in the East on those nights.

Zube

Thank you Zube !

I have just used those references to get visual images.

This one is pretty well what I saw (bottom right corner):
http://clyde.as.utexas.edu/SpAstNEW/M35-RADECbest.gif

This one is even better(bottom right corner):
http://www.utahskies.org/image_library/deepsky/clusters/Pleaides-Hyades/Pleiades-Hyades-20030901-1-1.jpg
Stare very closely at the bottom right corner and you begin to see a dense mass of red stars. Of course - seeing the real thing - the stars seemed to be constantly flickering on and off.
I assume that the small cluster in the top left quadrant is the Pleiades. This is not what I saw.

Once again, very many thanks
h2g2-42