Meet: Sten Odenwald

Who I Am
I received my Ph.D in astronomy from Harvard University in 1982 and since then I have been employed at the Space Sciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory, BDM International, the Applied Research Corporation, and most recently Raytheon; all located in the greater Washington, D.C. area. My dream, as for many young astronomers, was to get a tenured position in astronomy at some college or university, but that option never materialized for me. I have since turned my creative energies in public education toward writing articles for magazines such as "Astronomy" and "Sky and Telescope." My most recent article 'Solar Storms: The hidden menace,' appeared in the March 2000 issue of "Sky and Telescope." I have also authored two books: "The Astronomy Cafe," which came out in May 1998 and "The 23^rd Cycle: Learning to live with a stormy star," which will be out in December 2000. I am also working on a third book "The Accidental Vacuum," which will be published sometime in 2001. You may find my award-winning web site The Astronomy Cafe a fun place to visit for more about a career in astronomy, plus my 3001-question FAQ archive on space and astronomy from A to Z. I received the NASA 'Excellence in Outreach' award in 1999 from the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Currently, I am the Education and Public Outreach Manager for the IMAGE satellite project. We have developed a lot of material for teachers and students at our IMAGE education web site. I will be working closely with the IMAGE team scientists to help us all understand why the magnetosphere is so important, and how the information we gain from this satellite will help scientists understand how the Sun affects our environment in space. I am also involved with the NASA Office of Space Science 'Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum' where I develop new NASA resources in solar-terrestrial science education, and help NASA work with teachers at national conventions and workshops across the country. I also continue to be an active astronomer. My latest paper 'Clustering of the Diffuse Infrared Light From the COBE DIRBE Maps' was published in the "Astrophysical Journal," January 1, 2000.

What follows below are some excerpts from my ruminations about my career thus far and how I got here!

When I was a Child
I was in love with dinosaurs, human anatomy, ancient Egypt, chemistry sets, electronics, microscopes, collecting rocks, collecting and 'pickling' animals in glass jars, raising gopher snakes, hamsters, rabbits, salamanders, lizards...all of this before I was 11 years old. It was thrilling to learn something new, with no care at all about whether it was practical or 'not cool' to be that curious. When I turned 10, my Papa showed me the stars one night. I can honestly say I had never paid them any attention at all until that night. Within a year I had my own telescope, was building a telescope, and had read every book in my school and public library on astronomy. I had a ravenous appetite for space and read science-fiction books by the score, over 100 novels during my peak year in 9th grade!

Looking back at the things I have saved from that time, it is apparent to me that I was truely in love with space, and I had learned some amazing things by the time I entered 10th grade. Academically, I was a hard-working student...very, very stubborn. I got mostly B's and B+ in math, with occasional A's. Even in chemistry and physics and AP math I would work hard and get B+ each quarter, and occasionally an A. I graduated high school with a 3.7 average. But I really hit my stride in the enriched atmosphere of U.C Berkeley with straight A's in calculus, and an A- average in physics. My SAT scores were not 'stellar' by today's standards with a total of 1219. So there you have it...but through all the frustration and excitement of learning new things about science and space, I never, ever lost my perspective on why I was bothering to study all of this at all.

The night sky and the wonders of science were not designed for people only worried about politics, economics, or what's on tonight's TV. One look at the rings of Saturn, or at the boiling surface of the Sun, or at the core of a distant pinwheel galaxy, and it is obvious the universe was designed for artists, poets and dreamers. From the very first moment I looked through my Papa's binoculars, I understood that there was something very magical, spiritual and alien about space. Today I understand things about space that sometimes scare me very badly, but I never take the view for granted.

My two daughters, Stacia age 6 and Emily age 8, are getting to know their Papa's love of space. As I guide them through learning how to use math and to read, I am humbled by how life has come full circle for me. In a few years they will look into an eyepiece and see Saturn's rings for themselves. They will count the stars in the Big Dipper and the whole sky will become their old friend through the good times and the bad ones.

So, as you visit the Web and cruise among the pictures from space, don't forget to take the time to go outside and learn the sky for yourselves. But please, don't just look at the sky like an empty canvas that has to be filled. It is already full of some of the most wonderous and exciting things you will ever come to know. Your journey of exploration begins by continuing to be inquisitive and asking your own questions about what you see. The math and science you will learn by day, will enrich your experience...astronomically!

An Interview--
Sten was interviewed for an electronic magazine and here are the questions he was asked and his replies:

Q: So, why is your job so interesting?
A: Because I study the universe! I get up each morning and come home for dinner, but for 40 hours every week I get to think about and study some small corner of the universe. And in my mind, I am transported a million light years outside my body.

Q: Were you always interested in this line of work?
A: Yes, except for some bouts with dinosaurs and chemistry before the age of 10. Since then, everything I have taken up as a hobby has been in support of astronomy as my passion. Science fiction reading, electronics, writing, photography. About the last one, I still have a habit of setting my camera focus at infinity when taking family photos. Even as a Boy Scout, it was only the means for me as an urbanite to escape into the country to see the night sky in all its glory.

Q: Who or what is your inspiration?
A: My inspiration is the entire physical universe and the wonderment of how well the forces and matter all stir together in just the right balances to make stars, planets and life possible. And that it all follows simple, comprehensible patterns and laws which you can uncover and understand IF you simply bother to take the time to study them. Non-scientists do not do this, and that is why the physical world often seems so ad hoc and mysterious to them. So far as human inspiration is concerned, I do not have a single person or scientist that I consciously try to emulate as a heroic figure. The mistake we make in this society is to insist that children HAVE to have hero figures to look up to, rather than follow their own hearts and minds.

Q: How do you see the 90's work ethic crunching your lifestyle?
A:My work is more intense. With enormous amounts of information being dumped online into public archives every month, you sometimes 'seize up' as 10 different ideas go through your head about what to investigate next. But you only have five working days to prioritize and extract meaning from it all. Most pf the new astronomical data you hear about is stuff I never get the chance to look at professionally. Too much to do, too little time.

Q: What is the next mountain you hope to climb?
A: Olympus Mons on Mars.

Q: How is your job changing? What will it be like 10 years from now?
A:I now get to spend more time in public education. Since getting out of graduate school 15 years ago, and never getting an offer to teach as a 'day job,' all of my education works has been in writing popular articles and doing adult education courses. Now, I have finally found a way to make education a big part of my day job as a 'contractor'. 10 years from now, I expect I will be doing about the same as what I am doing now, but worrying less about loosing my job in a year. As a contract astronomer for 15 years, this temporary way of living has become so entrenched in how I do science and how I think about my career, that it has been impossible to think of long term research projects, or plan my professional life over more than 2-3 years. I think this is slowly changing.

Q: How has the Internet affected your profession?
A:I have been on the Internet for over 10 years. Most of this time was using email and FTP, but the single biggest change has been in the explosion of professional resources now available such as data archives. Now that NASA is committed to putting real data online immediately after the satellite/spacecraft get it, every astronomer has nearly instant access to new data. This has increased the pace of research enormously, and for many of us, we no longer need to worry about not getting observing proposals accepted to get our own data. We can often use what is already online to do some of our research. As for education, it is now a whole new ball game since we have decided that the Internet is the new godsend for educating our children. I hope this new experiment works, because we are sure investing lots of money into it so that every poor urban school has a spiffy, expensive, high-tech link to the Web.

Q: What's your favorite Web site and why?
A:I view the entire World Wide Web as a single Web site, but the Babylon V Lurkers Area is my favorite 'room.' I love the series, the actors and actresses, and the story line. One of the finest pieces of science fiction I have 'read' in a very long time.

Q: If your job was a song, what would it be?
A: Well...each decade seems to have its own in my book. In the 1960's it was Spanky and Our Gang's "I'd Like to Get to Know You" when I was a kid trying to fit in. In the 1970's it was Cool and the Gang's "Summer Madness" or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Reminiscing," while I was in college and graduate school. There are lots of others. The 1980's is a big jumble of favorites, but I have not paid any attention to Rock 'n Roll since 1988 or so.

Q: What's your professional culture like? Work habits?
A:Pretty bleak and gloomy by most people's assessment. It is a solitary job. I work mostly alone in an office with a computer terminal. I have occasional hallway chats with people on the same floor, and once a week we MIGHT all get together for a 'bag lunch' to hear someone give a 30-minute talk about some topic. A few times a year I go to national meetings or to observatories. Meetings can be fun because I get to meet old friends from grad school, or new collaborators. Observatory trips are terribly exciting and usually the high point of my year as that's when actual discoveries are made that will then be investigated back at the office for the next year or more. We all dress very casual: jeans, sneakers, shorts, and other fashion elements depending on age and status. I know of no astronomers, except those over 60, that wear suits and ties. We set our own office hours, we come in and leave when we please, but usually work more than 40 hours a week even with this schedule, except if we have families. I never work a minute longer than 40 hours because my family life is more important to me than my professional life. The 'culture' itself...well...there are 6500 astronomers in this country. They come from the cohort of the brightest students you ever met in your math and science classes in high school and college. Still, with few exceptions, astronomers are far from being nerds. They are highly talented, many are amateur musicians, but there are so few of us that we have almost no sense of being a part of a larger group like lawyers or engineers. This makes for professional isolation and the profound feeling of being an autonomous individual, going it alone, but having one heck of a fun time with your studies.

Q: Why do you do what you do, and how do you see it affecting the greater world?
A: I am compelled to do what I do...teaching and research...by a profound sense of wonderment about the physical world. It is a childlike wonderment that I have managed to shield in this area from the cynicism of adolescence and adulthood that is so rampant in today's society. We are all children at heart, and for scientists and astronomers, we get to hang onto the pure wonderment and enthusiasm of childhood a lot longer than in many other professions. It is the battery that drives us to ask 'silly questions' and to make momentous discoveries from time to time, because as adults we also know how to go about finding answers to the questions that are still posed by the child within us.

What I do affects the world by letting meaning and light shine a little more brightly and deeper into the recesses of our ignorance. Humans have many prejudices, and most do not have the time or inclination to understand how the physical world operates. My profession is that collective aspect of society that is assigned to search for answers to questions that most people do not have the time or capacity to answer. In finding answers and uncovering new questions, I help to make our world a more comfortable and less mysterious and frightening place to live and raise a family.

Links to two recent essays I have written on solar storms and how they effect us:

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sechtml/storms.html

http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/workbook/storms.html

Learn More From My Chats

• April 20, 2000
  
• March 7, 2000
  
• February 3, 2000
  
• January 20, 2000
  
• December 7, 1999
  
• November 18, 1999
  
• November 5, 1999
  
• October 21, 1999
  
• October 14, 1999
  
• August 10, 1999
  
• May 20, 1999
  
• May 6, 1999
  
• April 29, 1999
  
• April 15, 1999
  
• March 4, 1999
  
• February 11, 1999
  
• February 4, 1999
  
• January 28, 1999
  
• January 21, 1999
  
• January 7, 1999
  
• December 10, 1998
  
• December 1, 1998
  
• November 19, 1998
  
• November 4, 1998