by Jim Ster
For many decades, the Blue Canyon Airport has served the needs of amateur astronomers from the greater Sacramento area in northern California, providing what was easily the most accessible dark sky observing site for anyone living in or near the Interstate 80 corridor. While the light domes from Nyack, Sacramento and Auburn have steadily grown over the years, the "deforestation project" around the Blue Canyon Airport this past spring has uncovered two of the most obnoxious, incredibly BRIGHT RED anti-collision lights on the automated weather station tower I've ever seen. These lights are so bright that they caused shadows to be cast and made it virtually impossible to obtain complete dark adaptation. I know they've been there for years, but without the trees to block them, I was surprised to see how much they impacted our observing session.
Any attempt to view the northern quadrant of the sky through my SCT was met with a burst of red glare caught by my Schmidt Corrector Plate. For any SCT owners out there wanting to give Blue Canyon Airport a try, I'd highly recommend you bring along your dew shield to minimize this effect and just forget about the northern quadrant of the sky. I'm actually curious to hear the opinions of some of the imagers who were there last night about this. I'm wondering how it affected their ability to do what it is that they do in any way.
I did get in a few good views before some stomach pains sidelined me for an hour around 11:00pm before I gave up and headed home around 1:30. M51 was as good as I'd seen it, especially through Gregg's 25". The thin, wispy spiral arms wrapped around the core about three times before they finally dissolved into the black background. The Ghost of Jupiter, although at the edge of the light dome from Auburn and Sacramento, looked very mottled and as if it was composed of two or more different expanding shells of gas, which it may be. M13 was it's usual spectacular self. It was as good as I'd ever seen it through VB. Of course, the same view through Gregg's 25" was so rich and full of stars that I spent a few minutes hogging the eyepiece while I marveled at its beauty. M81 and M82 were looking splendid, although this is where I first ran into a slight red glare from the newly uncovered lights on my corrector plate. The same view through Jane's 12.5 Zambuto equipped Starmaster showed no signs of this glare and was most pleasing.
To sum it up, after last night, the Blue Canyon Airport observing site has dropped many, many notches on my list of preferred dark sky observing sites. I'll now take either the Fiddletown or even the Esparto sites over the Blue Canyon Airport in a heartbeat. Unless the Placer County authorities can do something to rectify this situation, I don't think it's worth bothering to go there any more, unless it's all that available that evening.. I give it a HSF.