by Jay Freeman
I arrived at my lodging in Old Station mid-day Tuesday, and had a fine night observing both in the yard there and at a convenient highway turnout not far away. I used my Orion 120 mm f/5 refractor -- a fine rich-field telescope -- and my 14x70 binocular, and had wonderful dark-sky views in shirt-sleeve temperatures.
I slept late and lazed around on Wednesday, then headed toward the airport, arriving at about 4 PM. Unhappily, I quickly became convinced that the risk of exposing optics and mechanical parts to airborn dust was sufficiently great that I was unwilling to set up telescopes at that site. So I came home.
I stayed away from work for the rest of the week, so am only now seeing the various EMail and discussion about the star party. My opinion on the dust seems to have been in the minority, so I should probably make clear what bothered me and how I made the decision.
The paved runway, about as wide as a two-lane road, ran roughly northeast/southwest. A strip about fifty feet wide on either side of it had been graded level enough to drive on. The plan was to use the eastern strip, camping adjacent to the runway, setting up equipment on it, and driving on the graded area behind people's campsites.
The graded strips had no vegetation or gravel, and the resulting surface contained everything from football-sized rocks down to fine dust and silt, the latter occasionally in wide layers at least half an inch thick. Driving at a dead crawl raised dust higher than my vehicle, in a cloud that lingered for more than ten seconds. That was enough to make me pretty sure I did not want to use the site.
I decided to say hello to folks and think about what to do next. After wandering around a little, I sat in the shade of my van's rear hatch for an hour or an hour and a half, and watched. During that time, about a dozen cars drove by, all slowly and carefully. Each car raised dust to at least its own height. Three vehicles raised dust to more than twenty feet. During that time, the relatively light wind twice raised dust on its own. The wind was mostly a little to the east of straight down the runway, so most of the dust drifted away from the camping and setup areas, but one of the big plumes was carried clear across the runway to the west side, fortunately not crossing any part of the camping area where anyone had yet camped, or any part of the runway where anyone had set up equipment.
I could probably have coped with cars going by, in and out -- it is usually obvious that they are moving, and one can check the wind and cover optics if necessary. But the prospect of a gust of wind raising gritty dust without me being able to anticipate it was too big a risk, or so I thought.
I might have stayed around just to socialize, but I was burning my vacation time and wanted to get some observing done, somewhere, somehow. I wasn't sure whether anyone would be willing to organize a side trip in search of a better location, and I am reluctant to set up large equipment (I had my C-14) alone in solitary locations. So I decided that the best thing to do was to drive home that evening, and spend the rest of my vacation week observing at the usual sites near the Bay area. And that is what I did; I had one fair and two excellent nights at Coyote, and one good evening in my yard in Palo Alto.
I don't think I will be willing to observe at the Shingletown Airport in the future, unless there is some dramatic change in the surface exposure of dry dust adjacent to the runway.