GOSHEN Night space at right time: Teacher gets look at Mars

The teacher built her own telescope when she was 16.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
GOSHEN -- Jodi McCullough points toward the soybean field beyond her back yard.
Those short trees, in front of the high ones, mark the area. Between them, she said, is a good clear spot.
It's darker out there, too -- a perfect place to use her new 14-inch Celestron CGE 1400 telescope.
The Lisbon High School teacher was given the device through a grant program of the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation after writing a proposal on how she would use it to enhance her education.
The computer-controlled telescope arrived in May, along with a digital camera that takes photographs of the scope's view of the sky.
Since then, she has seen some planets she's never seen before, such as Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter and Mars.
"Mars, that's been great," she said. "No one has ever seen Mars through a telescope the way we're seeing it today. You can see dark features. I knew we'd be able to see the polar ice caps, but we can see clouds lifting up through the mountains."
Close pass
In fact, minor chores have been set aside as McCullough, like many others across the globe, tries to sneak a peek at Mars, which this week is making its closest pass to the Earth in 60,000 years.
Mars is usually about 140 million miles away from Earth, but on Wednesday its orbit brought it about 34.6 million miles away. The planet will not be so close to Earth again until 2287. Astronomers say the good viewing will last for days.
"I'm hoping to get some good pictures of Mars," McCullough said. "We haven't had good skies here this whole month. But up to the end of September we should have some good views."
Despite the clouds, McCullough is still gazing, some nights until 1 or 2 a.m. The best viewing of Mars is after 11 p.m. or midnight.
McCullough, who teaches astronomy, physics and chemistry at David Anderson High School, passed some of her passion on to students when classes started Wednesday. They, too, are anxiously waiting to see the planet.
They're not the only ones: McCullough's mother, in East Palestine, is hoping to have neighbors look through the new telescope from her yard.
Scenic Vista Park
And, on Saturday night, she'll tote the telescope, weighing some 200 pounds, to the Scenic Vista park west of Lisbon. There, she'll share it with members of the Mahoning Valley Astronomy Club and other onlookers. She'll also likely be in the park Sunday to allow her students a chance to stargaze.
McCullough was bitten by the astronomy bug as a fifth-grader at Unity Elementary School in East Palestine. Her teacher was an astronomy buff and helped her capture a similar interest.
When she was 16, she ground her own eight-inch mirror and made a telescope of her own -- one she has redone and still uses alongside the newer technology. Telescopes, she said, are like fishing lures: You have to use the right one to capture the right thing.
She earned her bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy and a master's degree in astronomy online, through the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
Up next
McCullough intends to use the new telescope to further her astronomy training, specifically to learn how to take photographs. She'll also use it with student groups and other local groups.
"It's very interesting to look at what's out in space. All the sciences are related to what we see in space, a lot of physics and chemistry and biology and astrobiology," she said. "You're seeing the whole universe when you're looking into space."