Regarding Meteor I saw...
Thanks to a thread that Andrew just did, it seems that the meteor I saw is the Orionid meteor shower which peaks between the 17th & 19th.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=67071
Regarding question M42...
This is a picture of the two small round blobs of nebulosity surrounding two stars in the M42 region, that I was talking about. It is at the top right in the pic, where there is brown cloud. It appears the it belongs to a larger nebula section which I didn't see as it looks quite dark in this pic. There are so many catalogue no's within this nebula things got a bit confusing for me trying to track down some of these parts - namely this one.
http://www.astrophoto.net/m42.html
So is this a separate catalogue no or part of m42?