Telescope Reviews: Airport Upgrade?

One night a couple of summers ago, I was similarly jolted by the sudden appearance of a rotating strobe light in the sky above my house that seemed to pan across the entire sky over a period of about once every thirty seconds. The source came from a fixed location somewhere to my due south, where there are no hills, towers, or airports (the local airport is ten miles due west), and the land use for quite a long distance in that direction is ordinary commercial and residential. It was distant enough and at enough of an upward angle to the ground to not be jarringly bright to the naked eye, but bright and frequent enough to be quite annoyingly distracting to anyone looking up at the sky for more than a short while, especially for astronomical observing. The beam angle was high enough, together with the lush treeline, that it didn't shine onto the ground (and especially toward anyone's house windows). None of my neighbors I talked to knew where it was coming from, and there had been nothing in local news lately to suggest what it might be, and so when it appeared for the third consecutive night I was concerned that this might be a new permanent local feature, and went out in my car to track down the source.

It turned out that a couple of miles south of me, a new nightclub had opened up in a space that had formerly housed a couple of failed restaurants, and the offending skylight was located in the parking lot in front of their club, mounted on a portable small trailer similar to the sort commonly seen at highway construction projects to carry generators around to various sites. The theme/ music (and obvious target clientele) for this club appeared to somewhere between hip-hop and techno-pop, and so I dreaded contemplating the prospects of trying to persuade or else take on the owners of this club over the issue, and began fervently hoping that enough other people (e.g. the residents of an apartment complex directly across the street and the residential neighborhood behind that) might also come forward with objections (the spotlight was much, much, brighter up close, even though it was aimed up into the sky).

Fortunately, after nearly a week, the spotlight ceased to shine any longer, and next time I went by, the light and its trailer were gone from the club's parking lot. Either they had only planned to use it as a temporary initial promotion stunt, or else someone effectively mounted objections with local authorities before I had to.

About the only downside to the situation taking care of itself (from my perspective) was that I never got around to looking through the relevant city codes to see when and if this sort of skylight use is legal vs illegal. The particular club was a poor fit for the area it was located in (as would be any sort of rowdy music/dance club, even of the sort that would be more appealing to me), and only lasted several months before it closed.

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Chris M., aka "First Sight"
Orion XT12i Dob with Moonlite CR-2 focuser
WO Megrez 90 refractor on UniStar Light mount
Nikon 10x50 Binoculars