Happy New Year!

If anyone out there has been checking this blog for the last 11 weeks, hoping to find something new, please accept my apologies. Blogging got pushed to the back burner by a combination of the November election, professional duties, holiday travels, and personal matters. In any case, Happy New Year! 

Speaking of holiday travels, I again spent New Year’s weekend in remote Boulder, Utah, with a group of accomplished environmentalists. Couldn’t ask for a better setting, or better company, to start the year off right.

Besides enjoying the scenery and getting some exercise, we did a bit of work during our day hikes. On New Year’s Day we documented the existence of a new house that someone has illegally built on BLM land in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. I suppose the builder figured it would be easier to get forgiveness than permission. Let’s hope he gets neither.

Then on Saturday we helped Bill Wolverton in his ongoing war against invasive Russian olive trees in the Escalante canyons. Bill is a seasonal employee of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and I’m pleased to report that after a decade of work he is winning the war--at least within the NRA boundaries, where he has cleared the Russian olive from the Escalante River canyon and nearly all of its tributaries. Let’s hope that the BLM, which manages the upstream portions of these canyons, will soon step up its weed eradication efforts to match those of the Park Service.

Our small project was merely to cut and burn some Russian olive that Bill had already killed some time ago. This is important not just for aesthetics but also to clear out the thorny brambles for the benefit of hikers and wildlife. First we had to hike through a couple miles of weed-choked canyon down to the NRA boundary, where Bill’s past efforts were immediately apparent. Still, there’s more work to be done, and we built two splendid bonfires to dispose of the cut logs and brush.

Returning to Boulder at nightfall, we were treated to a spectacular sky full of stars. So I quickly changed into dry socks, grabbed my camera and tripod, and ran back out to the road to take a few photos before moonrise (and supper). I first shot a photo of Orion rising and another of Cygnus (and the Milky Way) setting. Then glancing over at Jupiter, I saw a distinct glow around it and realized that, for the first time in my life, I was seeing the famous zodiacal light. Boulder must be one of the few inhabited places on earth where this faint band of light is still visible. I’m already making plans to go back for a star party in warmer weather.

Rockets in the News

It’s been a big week for NASA in the Ogden Standard-Examiner. Tuesday’s top front-page story was about the imminent test launch of the Ares I rocket, whose booster stage is manufactured locally at ATK. Then on Wednesday, the business section ran a wire-service article on the same subject, complete with photos and graphics--plus a teaser headline at the top of the front page with a picture of the rocket stretching all the way across. The launch is scheduled for next Tuesday, so I suppose we can look forward to at least one more big article.

Meanwhile, buried inside Friday’s paper was another article, with no illustrations, about the release of the Augustine Committee report. This appointed committee of experts has concluded that NASA’s ambitious plans for human space flight are unrealistic unless its budget is increased by $3 billion per year. Even then, the most glamorous mission we can afford within 15 years is to land on a passing asteroid or comet, or perhaps fly past Mars without landing. Oh, and the Ares I rocket is too small for such a mission.

Even Friday’s article devoted only one sentence to the question of why NASA should do these things. At least according to one committee member, the reason is “to interest the American public in new destinations.” I suppose that’s more or less equivalent to “because it’s there.”

The article gave far more space to Congressman Rob Bishop’s reaction to the report, which focuses entirely on what’s in it for his district: jobs at ATK producing Ares and Space Shuttle booster rockets.

I have to congratulate the PR folks at NASA and ATK for playing-up this test launch enough to push the Augustine report off the front page. And I can hardly blame the paper for caring more about jobs in Utah than vague long-term goals.

But I find it sad that human space flight, which once represented humanity’s loftiest goals, is now viewed as little more than another jobs program.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My father, Vernon Schroeder, turned 92 today. In recognition of the occasion, let me try to outline his long and fascinating life.

Dad was born in western North Dakota. His parents were Fred Schroeder and Edith Jesperson, children of immigrant farmers. One family was German and the other was Danish, but most of all they were Lutheran.

When he was told, as a teenager, that nonbelievers would burn in Hell for all eternity, Dad decided there could be no higher calling in life than to save souls from such unthinkable suffering. So he decided to become a minister. He went to college in Moorhead, Minnesota, and then to seminary in St. Paul. After a year at that seminary he decided their theology wasn’t quite correct, so he transferred to the more doctrinally pure Missouri Synod Lutheran seminary in St. Louis.

As a minister he was never expected to serve in World War II. Instead he became pastor to a congregation in rural Minnesota for three years. Then he moved back to St. Louis and worked at the Missouri Synod publishing house where in 1949 he met my mother, Dorothy Schneider, the granddaughter of urban German Lutheran immigrants.

A few years after getting married, Dad took a job teaching Old Testament at a Lutheran parochial high school. That fresh look at the Bible convinced him it couldn’t all be literally true, and sent him down the slippery slope from fundamentalism to agnosticism. But though he may have literally lost his faith, he never lost his fundamental goal in life: to save people from suffering.

Years later, after he retired and my mother died, Dad finally had the freedom to pursue his dream of full-time “ministry” on his own terms. So he moved himself from the quiet suburbs of St. Louis to a retirement home in the center of Washington, DC. Those who didn’t know him well were astounded that at age 80 he would move farther away from his sons, to a city where he didn’t know a soul. But for him, it made perfect sense. He had always loved big cities, he was never that close to any of his family, and he wanted to go where he could find plenty of people to preach to, one at a time. Also, as he quipped only half-jokingly, he wanted to attack the world’s evil at its root.

Politically, Dad has always been on the far left. He grew up during the Depression, when it seemed perfectly reasonable to be a fundamentalist Christian and a socialist at the same time. Today his ideals seem incongruous. Like most liberals, he supports workers’ rights, minority rights, and the United Nations. Recently he has also embraced newer liberal causes such as environmental protection, abortion rights, and gay rights. But at the same time he despises the ACLU and its allies for trying to purge religion from the government and the public schools. Though he calls himself an agnostic, he cannot imagine morality without religion.

Dad has spent the last 12 years walking the streets of the nation’s capital, looking for people who will listen to him. He visits congressional offices, other government buildings, and nonprofit institutions, talking mostly to receptionists and security guards. He carries little homemade “tracts” in his pocket and hands them out. He frequently calls and writes to tell me of his ministry’s many dead-ends and ever-present hopes.

He readily admits that his platform is a little vague. We need to get rid of the corrupt corporations and government institutions and churches and over-paid professionals. We need to put religion and morality back into the schools. We need to bring people together in small groups for frequent serious discussion. Ideally, people should live in communes. Let the detail-oriented people work out the details.

Sadly, Dad has never understood my love of abstract science: How is it morally acceptable to spend time solving “problems” that don’t directly affect people? He sympathizes with my local political crusades, but considers them petty compared to the world’s big problems.

And my view of his ministry is equally critical. I wish he were more of a pragmatist and a problem solver, not just an idealist. I wish he could focus his thoughts well enough to gather up the one-liners into a coherent booklet or even a letter to the editor.

Still, he’s doing what he loves, working day and night to show the world that he cares--even at age 92. That in itself is enough to earn anyone’s respect.

Astrophotography for the Rest of Us

A couple of decades ago, when I was still using a fully manual SLR film camera, I tried some simple astrophotography: Long-exposure photos of star trails from a fixed tripod, and also some “piggyback” photos with the camera mounted on a small motor-driven telescope to track the stars. The results were satisfying but hardly spectacular, and the time required was substantial enough that my priorities soon turned elsewhere.

Then last January, at the start of the International Year of Astronomy, my interest in astrophotography began to return. By then I was using a marvelous little Canon point-and-shoot digital camera, and I was delighted to learn that it would take time exposures as long as 15 seconds. While spending the New Year’s holiday in remote Boulder, Utah (about as far from city lights as you can get in the contiguous 48 states), I decided to brave the cold and try a few shots of the winter constellations.

To my astonishment, that little camera recorded 10 times as many stars as my eye could see. Unfortunately, the photos were also plagued by digital noise that severely limited the aesthetic possibilities. I suppose this noise is the digital equivalent of the grainy appearance of photos on high-speed film.

Meanwhile, I had been marveling at the ever-better scenic night photos posted on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day site. Following the links from some of my favorites, I discovered sites like TWAN and The Sky In Motion. These photographers were using digital SLR cameras to make stunning photos showing the sky in great detail behind interesting foreground scenes. The noise levels were acceptable, because DSLR cameras have bigger and better electronic sensors than my point-and-shoot.

A terrific resource for would-be astrophotographers is Jerry Lodriguss’s web site, Catching the Light. One of his technical articles indicates that even some of the cheapest consumer-model DSLR’s can produce excellent night shots. But did I want to spend even $500 for such a special-purpose toy? “Well,” I rationalized, “I’ve already had two astronomy students use DSLR cameras for their observing projects, and I need to learn how to help them when necessary.”

I got the new camera on September 10. Then even I, a professional geek, had to spend a week just getting familiar with all the buttons and menus. I also discovered that to shoot exposures longer than 30 seconds (without a computer connected), I needed to get a $25 remote switch. Finally prepared, I headed up to Ogden’s foothills on a couple of our recent spectacular September nights. The best shots from these sessions are posted here. In short, I'm amazed at what can now be done with amateur equipment and very little effort.

Incidentally, this was the first time I’ve ever been glad for light pollution. Although scattered light from the city brightened the sky (and pretty much ruined any shots facing west), that same light pollution cast beautiful illumination on Ogden’s mountains.

How much further I’ll take this hobby, I have no idea. Certainly I’ll try some photos from a few other sites around Ogden. And I’ll bring the new camera on camping trips, to see what it can do from some darker locations. Perhaps I’ll try to schedule these trips to coincide with favorable moonlight to illuminate the scenery.

But I’m not a professional photographer, so if you want to see really nice photos of the sky, follow the links above.

Innumeracy at the Standard-Examiner

Today's Standard-Examiner has an article about a small hydroelectric unit that Ogden will be installing at its water treatment plant. According to the article:

• The unit is being funded by a $169,000 grant;
• It will generate 131,400 kilowatts of electricity;
• It will save the city about $10,000 each year.

Can you see that there's something wrong here? A kilowatt of electricity is enough to power an average home, so 131,400 kilowatts would probably power the entire city of Ogden. There's no way such a plant could be built for the cost of a single home, or that the energy delivered annually would be worth less than a new car.

It isn't hard to guess what the "131,400" figure really means: It's actually the number of kilowatt-hours per year. This is a unit of power that would make my physics students groan in dismay, but it's legitimate and even useful when you're thinking about annual budgets. Divide $10,000 by 131,400 and you get an average cost of 7.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is about what we pay for electricity here in Ogden.

So what's the plant's output in more conventional units? Divide 131,400 by 365 (days in a year) and by 24 (hours in a day) and you get exactly 15 kilowatt-hours per hour, that is, 15 plain old kilowatts. That's comparable to what your house would use if you turned on all the big appliances at once. And it's reasonable that a water treatment plant would use that much power on a continuous basis.

This isn't rocket science--it's something every educated person can and should understand. Everyone knows what a 100-watt lightbulb is, and most people know that "kilo" means 1000. A typical toaster or hairdryer uses about a kilowatt. A kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy that such an appliance uses when it's turned on for one hour. You need to know this to understand your monthly electricity bill, but few people bother to try.

Why don't newspapers expect their reporters and editors to know what a kilowatt is? Why don't universities expect every graduate to know this? Have we really decided, as a society, that thinking about numbers is only for specialists?

Pfeifferhorn!

The name alone makes this a compelling peak to climb. (I sometimes pronounce it “Ppppffffeifferhorn” just for fun.) It’s located southeast of Salt Lake City on the ridge between Little Cottonwood and American Fork, about half way between Lone Peak and Snowbird. Summit elevation: 11,326 feet.

We’d been planning this hike since the annual Pfeifferhorn Award dinner last November, when my friend Joan from The Nature Conservancy suggested it. By the time of yesterday’s hike we had each recruited some illustrious company, so it was a grand outing to a grand destination.

With so many terrific hikes closer to Ogden, I don’t get to the rest of the Wasatch Mountains often enough. But the Cottonwood Canyons do offer a few things that Weber County lacks: Summits over 11,000 feet, large alpine lakes, and federally protected capital-W Wilderness. The Pfeifferhorn lies within the Lone Peak Wilderness (Utah’s first), and the route to it passes beautiful Red Pine Lake. In July and August the high altitudes offer welcome cooler temperatures. While ambling over alpine terrain you can enjoy the cute little pikas constantly eeping at you.

This hike isn’t for everyone. You need to be reasonably fit and have pretty good balance to negotiate the steep slopes and large boulders. It also helps to have someone along who has done it before, so you don’t take a wrong turn and get into real trouble. Snow and ice make the hike much more dangerous earlier in the summer.

As we made our way toward the summit, I especially enjoyed watching my friend Jock, an experienced alpine climber who did a winter ascent of the Pfeifferhorn a few decades ago. Now 74, Jock had planned to stop at Red Pine Lake but couldn’t resist going higher. As we traversed the steep boulders he shot ahead, clearly in his element. By the time I reached the top he was already on his way down.

Endorsement: Buffalo Grass

Lots of folks here in Utah wish they could keep their lawns green without using so much water. My approach, since I became a homeowner, has been mostly to avoid lawn grass completely. I’ve covered a lot of my yard with native shrubs and water-wise perennials.

But it’s nice to have at least a little lawn grass, where you can sit and enjoy Utah’s marvelous summer mornings and evenings. So last year I took the plunge and planted a patch of drought-tolerant buffalo grass in my back yard.

I got the idea from the High Country Gardens catalog, and from one of my colleagues who had also tried buffalo grass. You order it in little plugs, an inch in diameter by two inches deep. The plugs come in flats of 72 for about $40 per flat. I ordered ten flats, which arrived in mid-May 2008. By then I had roto-tilled the ground, raked out the weeds, and mixed in some fertilizer.

The part I hadn’t thought through was this: You have to plant the plugs one at a time. An industrious person could have done it all in a couple of days, but I took two weeks, working about an hour each day. I planted the plugs a foot apart, covering a roundish area of about 600 square feet which my friends call the putting green. Then I carefully watered and weeded and waited. Much to my amazement, the plugs grew and filled in by the end of the summer.

Buffalo grass has two aesthetic disadvantages. First, it spreads by shooting out “runners” that try to find bare ground where they can put down roots. Once the grass has filled in, some of the runners start shooting upward where they look a little messy and make the grass feel stiffer. Second, buffalo grass turns completely brown in the fall and doesn’t turn green again until late spring (around mid-May this year in my case). So a lot of people won’t want it in their front yards, where the neighbors might disapprove.

Meanwhile, the advantages are as advertised: Buffalo grass needs only half as much water as “regular” grass (once it’s established); it needs much less mowing (never growing higher than about 8 inches); it can easily handle moderate foot traffic; and it grows thick enough to keep out most weeds.

It was definitely a worthwhile investment.