moon

Musings from Apollo 11’s 50th Anniversary

July 21, 2019 by tornado Leave a Comment

[I attempted to post this on 20 July, yesterday, but had access problems. That has been fixed.]

The greatest achievement in manned space travel happened 50 years ago today. Fifty years! That’s older than most people anymore, and figuratively longer still when counting those (like me) who were too young to recall it clearly. When Neil Armstrong took that “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind,” it was the unquestioned crowning achievement of all history of human exploration. I consider it still so, and even more remarkable that they were able to return safely with extra material gathered there. Make no mistake, the return was every bit the difficult feat of the trip there, if not even more perilous!

That event united Americans of all stripes around the red and white ones of the flag that Buzz Aldrin (above) and Neil planted. It captivated the entirety of humanity, in friendly and enemy nations alike, and gave youngsters the world over a sense of destiny and drive that ultimately inspired generations of scientists and engineers still working and contributing to their fields today. The Apollo missions, directly and indirectly, yielded not just direct discoveries about the moon, but scientific and technological breakthroughs we now take for granted in everyday life. The common STEM affirmation inspired in young scientists- and engineers-to-be was this: “Yes, we can do this! Yes, I can be a part of even greater things in the future!” Imagine that, if you can.

For a moment, the troubles of the ‘60s and Vietnam War were set aside. So was all the doubt and worry rendered by the Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed its crew a few months before I was born. Folks rural and urban, black and white and every hue between, man or woman, educated and illiterate, rich and poor and everything between, famous or not, young or old, of every faith and origin, sat in awe and wonder at something absolutely inconceivable a decade prior to all but dreamers and a few early space planners. Imagine that, if you can.

I was too little to sense this directly, but have gotten a remarkably consistent message from the stories of every single type of person alive at the time. It was a moment of tension and concern and fear, and ultimately, jubilation and elation in victory over doubt. In the middle of national strife and discord unknown since the Civil War, Americans of every makeup overflowed with national pride and a mass sense of accomplishment. No matter for whom we voted, no matter our backgrounds or creeds, we united as one around this astounding feat. Imagine that, if you can.

For most of a decade, over 400,000 contributors tuned out the myriad sociopolitical troubles of the age and focused on one noble goal, including astronauts who went and who didn’t, engineers, astrophysicists, geologists, rocket scientists, electricians, support staff of countless roles. NASA used earthbound mainframe computer complexes as big as houses. These machines held less capacity and far slower speed than the phone I hold in my hand today. Many of the old-school engineers and scientists involved still used manual tools in their calculations. The United States of America put men on the moon, in part using pencils, paper, handwritten calculus, drafting tools, light tables, and slide rules! Imagine that, if you can.

All of this effort did not contribute substantially to our national debt (the war was far costlier in fiscal and human terms). We still found a way to pay without breaking the national treasury, and without the expense of war, might have done more. Imagine that, if you can.

Before stepping onto the surface, while in the safely pressurized confines of the lander, Buzz took Holy Communion in honor of our Lord, Creator of the universe into which they had just gone farther than any human before. He asked Mission Control and the world for a moment of silence to give thanks, and silently read from John 15:5: “As Jesus said: I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in Him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.” In his own words, “I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.” The first thing any human ever consumed on another world was Jesus’ blood and body, broken for the sake of us. Imagine that, if you can.

Over 600 million people worldwide watched the Apollo 11 landing on TV, and maybe I did too. Alas, I only have faint memories of later landings and moonwalks in the early 1970s, viewed on some fitful, secondhand Philco or Curtis Mathes black-and-white TV, passed to us by a friend of my dad’s who repaired them for a living. One memory involved my dad slamming his large, strong hand on the side of one set repeatedly, trying to stop the scrolling and dodging of the picture during another landing broadcast.

Other memories involve a couple of his friends and co-workers who thought it all was staged, and our arguing with them. Those disputes were useless; neither of us yet had learned the wastefulness and futility of attempting rational dialogue with the irrational mind. I’m not sure my dad ever learned, and it took me until about age 35.

Other recollections involve later viewings of the original footage on the fifth, then tenth, then twentieth anniversaries, and so on. I’ve seen the films so many times, it’s as if I had watched the near-live version, and maybe I did, in my mom’s arms. On one commemoration I saw in 1989, the narrators wondered why we hadn’t returned since the early morning of 14 December 1972, when the last boot sole of Gene Cernan left the lunar surface to climb into a return module.

Upon departing, Cernan said:

“As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

…

It’s 2019, and we’re still waiting. We don’t need to imagine that, for it’s factually and brutally true. Twelve men walked on the moon; only four still survive deep into their old age. Soon, no one alive will have set foot on another world. We in this world have the greatest computing capacity and base of scientific astrophysical understanding ever. The existence of poverty—a common, thoughtless and stupid rationale for not doing space science and exploration—is at nearly its lowest levels in history, worldwide, as are wars and war casualties. We possess the greatest of medical and space-exploration understanding and material wealth in history, and somehow still haven’t mustered the will and unity to return. This tells me we’re bankrupt not as much of money or intellect or ability, but aspiration, attitude, focus, and desire. That, folks, is absolutely pathetic!

Note: None of what I write here is to downplay the importance of the many spectacular robotic, automated and remotely controlled missions that will (and probably should, for safety’s and efficiency’s sake) dominate space travel for the rest of the time we can. Yet there’s a place for human exploration and conquest as well, not just in the manually scientific, observational, and utilitarian (mining, energy, etc.) realms, but in a more fundamental mindset of boots-on-the-ground, immersive experience, and the unique inspirations that come from witnessing those experiences unfold across the cosmos. We are made to seek God’s glory, so much of which is spread across the eternal vastness of outer space; therefore, we should. That involves risks, including all that come with the pioneering stages of reaching for the stars.

Again, I’m too young to remember most of Apollo. Will I live to see the first American woman on the moon? Anybody else at all? Will my kids, or their kids? Or will we continue to let sociopolitical grandstanding and divisiveness, the crisis-level yoke of out-of-control deficit spending and skyrocketing national debt on far less-productive endeavors, and the flip side of mankind’s exploratory nature (our tendency to harm and undermine ourselves) continue to thwart greatness our nation once and first expressed through Apollo 11?

There’s work to do.

2017 Total Solar Eclipse: Our Amazing Experience

September 15, 2017 by tornado Leave a Comment

Meaning to finish this sooner after the eclipse, two rather major weather events called Harvey and Irma diverted attention and delayed things. I trust you’ll forgive that and find this summary of our eclipse sojourn insightful.

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Van Tassell: no hassle, just a passel o’green grassel! On this day, we went off-grid, out of pavement, off-network, into the eastern Wyoming weeds, and totaled the sun.

At age six, looking at a map of future solar totalities in the World Book Encyclopedia, I had this area in the crosshairs. Elke and I each have been waiting our whole lives for this, decades since childhood, so it’s fitting that we did it together.

Scientific understanding of the phenomenon does not prepare one for the totality of the totality experience in all senses: cooling temperatures, calming of heretofore ceaseless High Plains wind, sunlight on the prairie grass visibly dimming, rapid darkening, that shadowy speed, high clouds blacken fast in the west, then in seconds: zoom…horizon light with night overhead, surrounding the ring of coronal brilliance about an orb of singular darkness. All too soon, the veil rises and the sky and ground brighten with astonishing quickness. Two and a half minutes seemed like mere seconds.

Regardless, after a lifetime, we finally witnessed one of the most intensely spiritual and moving natural phenomena to be found. Thank God the moon’s apparent diameter so matches the sun’s at a proportional distance of one-over, as a cosmically tuned instrumental duo.

Those few hours along a remote Wyoming roadside, near the Nebraska border, were over a decade in the making, planning-wise, involving a chess-board of strategy between first, second, and third options on approach from Norman. Chasing a known target years in advance, within a 70-mile-wide strip across the nation, isn’t as easy as it sounds, and presents its own logistical challenges.

We had to ditch Option A that we had scouted for many years — Carhenge near Alliance — thanks to crowds estimated at over 4,000 by the Omaha World-Herald, including the state’s governor. From storm-observing trips, shooting sunset and supercell photos there, Carhenge is a familiar place, with no more than another few people on the whole property at any given time. Yet my dreams of shooting totality behind the silhouette of a classic sedan were dashed immediately upon arrival the day before. As we drove by, we saw that the place was jam-packed with people and campers already, and a cop stopping traffic on the highway to let crowds cross from the other side. Again, this was the afternoon before! It made me wish that priority went to those who think of it first instead of those who get there first, because I had Carhenge in mind for over ten years.

I suspected we would be doomed in that regard before the trip, after seeing this otherwise little-known and eccentric place mentioned in eclipse-travel stories as an out-of-the-way alternative by the Denver Post, L.A. Times, Weather Channel, and NPR — not exactly outlets with small audiences!

Fortunately we had a reservation at the Westerner — a wonderful, clean, friendly, welcoming, American-run, mom-and-pop motel in Chadron where we’ve stayed on several storm-observing trips. That also was set also many months in advance, to give us the flexibility to attack the eclipse path from the near-northern (less-populated) approach angle, and to reach most of western/central Nebraska and eastern Wyoming as needed, in the event of cloud cover or traffic problems.

Being a meteorologist, I knew days beforehand that the cloud-cover issue was a legitimate concern in southern and central Nebraska, and on into northern Missouri. A friend had offered me use of his church’s land in northern Missouri as “Option C” in the event my 2-day forecast was for clouds over the main target area of eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. [We had reserved in Lexington, NE, two nights before, to give is a wider-expanse flexibility that still was on the way from Norman to all target options].

By the time we got to Lexington, it was readily apparent that northern Missouri was out, and we were dealing with the Wyoming/Nebraska border region or bust. Our evening in Lexington was graced with a spectacular sunset, lighting up a large supercell 80 miles to our north…

Here’s the bigger SkyPix version, with story. That was followed by the development of a strand of elevated thunderstorms immediately to our east, which I photographed in the dark, from a familiar Platte River bridge near Overton:

Here’s the bigger SkyPix version, with story. That was one of numerous shots I got of filamentous lightning arching out from under cloud base and back into the storm, with almost no cloud-to-ground strikes. Such lightning behavior (to that disproportionate extent) is highly unusual in my storm-observing experience, and was fascinating to behold.

Other than navigating the Alliance and Carhenge crowds to get to Chadron, the day before the eclipse was relaxing and satisfying, especially amidst some of the Sandhills around McPherson and Arthur Counties, covered with wild sunflowers…

On eclipse morning, it was clear (pun intended) that cloud cover would be no problem over the western Nebraska Panhandle and eastern Wyoming, in a slot of opportunity between the ejecting southern-stream shortwave trough’s material and a narrow band of northern-stream cirrus cutting diagonally from southwestern to northeastern Wyoming. We also knew already that Carhenge and anything along and near I-25 was a cluster**** of human clutter, so we aimed for that long but little-traveled and high-quality dirt road going south out of Van Tassell toward Torrington.

We’ve storm-chased and done non-chase photography along that road before, so it was familiar. It goes paved well into the totality path, and there’s a double bend that offers plenty of parking room on public right-of-way out of traffic. We chose that at dinnertime the night before, finalized that decision after a 6 a.m. cloud “nowcast”, and left at 7 to take our place a mere 85 miles away.

Traffic on the road was light, but far more than the handful of cars normally seen on any given day. Fortunately, only four other vehicles parked within a mile — three in the grass around our bend, the fourth being a Doppler on Wheels truck anchored on steel stilts a half-mile to our south. In fact, I had seen a tweet from DOW scientist Karen Kosiba about their plans to sample the boundary layer with clear-air radar and in-situ measurements throughout the eclipse process. That should be a neat dataset! I didn’t know in advance where they were staking out, but wasn’t surprised to find them there. [Storm-intercept minds often think alike. :-)]

After a brief conversation at another DOW with senior scientist Josh Wurman (and shout+wave to Karen!) south of Van Tassell, we got to our spot and set up, with over an hour before the onset of partiality. We set up camp chairs and tripods and solar filters on lenses, then watched (with certified eclipse glasses) and waited and shot every 15 minutes. I went with a 100-400-mm “war horse” tube lens on one camera and a wide-angle L series on the other, just in case I did find an interesting foreground at the location (didn’t happen), and I only shot a few token images with the wide-angle before/after to concentrate on the zoom in to the sun.

Since our lens-mounted solar filters also were certified eye-friendly, we could look through them, but I tried to do so minimally, just in case. With each rendering of the partial sun, the moon obscured more and more sunspots.

Then came that eerie, gradual-then-fast darkening and graying of the Great Plains landscape all around, with noticeable cooling of the temperatures and lessening of the wind. The loss of solar radiation obviously was decoupling the boundary layer, just as occurs around sunset, and once again, I can’ wait to see the DOW crews’ dataset measuring these effects!

Finally, for the first time in my life: totality with corona! The image up at the top of this post was my favorite totality shot. Here is a higher-res version on SkyPix, with more narrative.

Most totality photos you’ll ever see have a black background due to the strong dynamic range around the corona. The JPG versions in my viewfinder did. Fortunately that marvelous navy blue in the real sky was in the RAW image (not in the JPG!), so it was easy to pull out in post-processing and render to how the sky really looked. It was a trade-off between exposing for more coronal detail or the sky, and with very limited time to both shoot and simply appreciate it with eyeballs, I chose to shoot for a chance to exhibit a rarely depicted true-sky look. Bonus: navy blue and silver, Dallas Cowboys colors! That actually occurred to me in real time too, while watching totality. It should clue you in to how much of a Blue Star fan I am, that this realization further enriched the totality experience for me.

The true eclipse experience involves first contact to last, and we enjoyed it all on a mild, post-cold-frontal High Plains summer day. Photographers crank out many composite images after total solar eclipses, and I was no exception.

Here is a larger version already online…click to enlarge.

Unfortunately I missed the diamond rings with camera, but no regrets. They were amazing to see for a blink! I share everyone’s lament that it couldn’t have lasted longer.

On the full-sized TIF, one can see even better the sunspots in each rendering of the partial sun (except where truncated by moon, of course). I plan to print that large-size for framing at home.

For the the composite, to fit the six partials on either side, I had to expand the pixel size of the TIF made from the totality RAW, so I simply pasted outward. The real sky at totality graded from a beautiful navy blue near the sun to a lighter (but still dark) twilight blue-gray with purplish tones at radial distances past about 5 solar diameters.

Here’s how it looked from the opposite side, out in space:

Here was a brief description from Elke soon afterward, accompanying her panoramic image below:

An utterly incomparable experience, visceral in high degree, for which nothing could prepare you. When the world went dark I looked up to see Venus glowing in the west, but when my eyes swept higher…the black hole above me, darker than darkest night, etched in sharpest relief by a blazing white halo — no photo could ever, ever, ever, do it the smallest justice.

There was so much wild and strange and awesome to look at, from that beautiful dome of blue black to indigo, to the planets visible, to that starkly burning black hole in the sky that made me weak in the knees, to the wind dying, and birds starting to sing again. I wish it had lasted at least half an hour. It took me that long to catch my breath after totality. I intend to leave my camera at home for the next one.

That light in the distance, down the road, is one of the DOWs.

Once over, still in a state of lingering euphoria, we headed back toward home, on a two-day journey. As for the traffic on main roads east, west and south of us, leading south and southwest to Denver, yes that was as horrendous as predicted. I heard some tales of hours of immobility and woe. One friend who was also near Glendo didn’t get back to his house near Boulder until 1 a.m.! By that time, I had been sound asleep in McCook for over two hours.

Heading southeast, we only got tangled up with some collateral congestion from cross-traffic in Torrington. Crossing miles of backed-up traffic was bad enough, and we were so thankful not to be embedded within it. We crossed another miles-long traffic line (streaming out of Alliance) in Bridgeport, NE. These small towns were ill-prepared for the siege of traffic that descended upon them.

We drove from McCook back to Norman the next day in a leisurely manner, with a fine Italian lunch in Salina. That made it a four-day trip for a couple minutes of totality, a sunset, and some lightning.

Those 2-1/2 minutes alone were worth every dime and mile. Next up: Dallas 2024—hometown, downtown, totality town. If I’m blessed with seven more years of healthy life and civilization doesn’t destroy itself before then, I must not miss a truly once-in-lifetime experience of hometown totality! Still, we’ll have Plans B and C at the ready in case of clouds or calamity.

Dawn Walk

August 9, 2012 by tornado Leave a Comment

Awake all night, as I tend to be between sets of evening and overnight shifts, I recently would see a preconceived drudgery transformed into a blessing.

Juvenile trees needed watering yet again. In a severe drought year, this menial toil for us becomes a matter of survival for certain young shrubbery on our acreage, trees and bushes in which I’ve invested money and the labors of planting and trimming, and and Elke has invested all manner of tender loving care, including most of the watering.

One bucket beckoned–not any bucket, mind you, but one in whose bottom I had drilled an eighth-inch hole for the purpose of steadily delivering five gallons of water to the root system of any needy tree or bush. In a hellish summer like this, record heat and parched earth dominant, even the native or near-native timber has to be hydrated until it has sunk the deepest of taproots. We help the trees through their youth this way, so they may stand magnificent and more self-sufficient well after we’re pushing daisies, a small contribution to the ideal of leaving the world a little better than we found it.

My task was to soak at least five crape myrtles. Two of them were tender striplings that had died back to the roots and regrew hesitantly, frail stems following last year’s subzero cold snap. Meager rain late the afternoon before–to be precise, eight-hundredths of an inch at a gauge twenty feet away–either had evaporated or collected in a shallow layer of soil destined for disappearance in the abusively torrid sunshine mere hours ahead. Indeed, moisture already was rising to the surrounding air, the evaporational sacrifice of a dew-fall well underway.

Tranquil and serene, the hour of darkness and faint light astride the dawn is my favorite time to be outdoors. I seldom get out in this, because of the need to work or sleep at that hour on two-thirds of shifts. Yet here it was, an opportunity for immersion in something always welcomes, but seldom appreciated to the extent to come.

Stepping into the quietest time of night, it was obvious immediately that even the paucity of rainfall was able to leave a most welcomed souvenir. A soothing, moist, earthy scent wafted in gentle pulses here and there in the faint breeze, as if invisible clouds of natural aroma therapy. The experience was best grasped by extended and slow nasal breathing, eyes closed to focus most deeply and intently on the sense of smell. A fantastic fragrance it was.

Eyes opened, a stroll began, the flow of mild and moist air mostly a function of my walking pace. The mellow breeze stroked every inch of exposed skin in a continual silken brush, comforting beyond a superficial sense of touch, satiating to the very core amidst the ever-soothing and perfume of the dew. Minutes passed, uncounted and immaterial.

Gazing above, the silver light of a half-lunar noontime diffused through altocumulus and cirrus clouds. Gazing below, ghostly shadows brushed the ground in feathered edges, including the one moving apace with me. Faint blue-gray light appeared in the east, barely discernible around moonlit cloud edges, yet brightening ever so gradually. That evanescent moment soon arrived when lunar light and dawn glow strike a perfect balance, each readily distinct yet no brighter than the other, symmetry and equanimity of visual beauty additively complementing the multisensory serenity of the scene.

During that period, a small gathering of altocumulus, cellular and honeycombed in shape, passed before the moon. Silver light diffracted into a circular ring of color along the thinner edges of the cloud cells, a corona migrating from gap to gap as the cloud mass translated past. Visual resplendence above then coalesced with the onset of an enchanting auditory elegance.

In the distance, a lone, male chuck will’s widow chattered forth, its extant melody echoing across the acres. Only one other of God’s creatures broke the silence of the dawn; and thank the Lord it was that one. Like me, the nightjar is a creature most at home in the foredawn interlude. He too cherishes more somber surroundings in a nocturnal setting unencumbered by the harsh glare, fast-paced superficiality and overbearing tumult of the diurnal interval through which we each prefer to slumber.

It had to end, I suppose. At some diffuse point, the dreamy reality faded, overtaken by the pragmatism of needful return to vegetative nurturing. How many steps or furlongs did I walk? What interval passed on the clock? I can’t say with accuracy, and it doesn’t matter.

A dawn walk, with senses wide open, experienced outside self as much as from within, transcended such trivialities as time and opened a more spiritual pathway aloft–a blessing indeed, one among countless available for those who surrender to the possibilities.