Something New Under the Sun at Saddleback College

During Thursday’s rainstorm, I drove to Saddleback College in Mission Viejo to find some sunshine.

If you’re like me, you never think of the sun as an active star. It’s just, well, it’s just there.

But astronomy teachers and students at Saddleback spend their days gazing at the sun through their new solar observatory on the roof of the Science-Math building. What they see is spectacular. And you can see it too.

Monitors are set up in the building’s lounge for viewing by students and anybody visiting from the community. You’ll see the sun’s activity exactly as it’s happening, only magnified 45 times.

My knowledge of the sun doesn’t extend much beyond that old Ronald Reagan joke: That as president he would send a manned mission to the sun. But to keep the astronauts from burning up, he’d send them at night.

Saddleback students and teachers showed me videotapes they’d taken in days before the rain, proving there is a lot going on 92 million miles away. There are all these explosions taking place--”prominence,” scientists call it in their low-key fashion. Fireballs the size of the earth are right now shooting off the sun’s surface.

Yong Kim, chairman of the astronomy department, explained that the sun shows volatile activity in 11-year cycles. We’re now starting the upswing. Astronomy classes five years from now will be gazing through their telescopes at a sun wild and crazy, though the rest of us won’t notice it.

Astronomy student James Thomas of Laguna Niguel operated the video equipment for me to see. Can you imagine Thomas’ excitement at the changes in the astronomy department. He signed up for his first astronomy classes four years ago, expecting to see some nice, neat 8-by-10 glossies of the sun, the moon, and a few planets. Then he finds out that his teachers are going to build their own solar observatory--good for night sightings too--and he can use it any time he wants.

In Thomas’ case, that means about all the time. He’s studying to be an astrophysicist.

Mitch Haeri, who teaches astronomy full time at Saddleback (and was once a student of Kim’s there) smiled when I asked if the students used the observatory a lot.

“We have three uses for the observatory,” he said. “First and foremost, it’s for our students. It’s a teaching tool, and an important one.”

The other two reasons he gave: It’s for staff and student research, perhaps in collaboration with other scholars, and to serve the community.

It was obvious Kim and Haeri are proud of what they’ve got. Haeri likes to say “state of the art” a lot. That’s because the observatory’s telescope can provide “real time” pictures, like a movie camera can, instead of the still photographs that most solar observatories are limited to.

Also, the dome on the observatory automatically rotates to follow the sun as the earth moves. Really, you can’t blame these folks for busting buttons over all this. It was their idea.

Kim came up with it several years ago, but there was no budget for it. But more than a year ago, he and Haeri approached Saddleback President Ned Doffoney with this offer: They’d build it themselves.

“We had all kinds of designs to show him,” Haeri said. “When we were done, he said he’d take the money from the general fund to make it possible. He’s been supportive the whole way.”

Haeri designed the observatory. Mehrzad Maghsoudlou from the astronomy staff led in building it, with help from the others, including Richard McCullough, dean of the math, science and engineering department, who donned a hard hat for several days.

While the main thrust is solar, the most spectacular tape they showed me was of the moon. I’d never seen it in such incredible, crater-by-crater detail.

“It’s all exciting,” Thomas told me. “There’s just an infinite number of things we can do with this.”

Take a look for yourself someday. Only don’t go when it rains.

How Did Eisner Know? I have a friend who loves the new Anaheim Angels logo. Not me. It looks like the Angels couldn’t decide what to do with the new design, so they just decided to do it all. But maybe I’m out of step. I never dreamed Michael Eisner, Disney’s chief, would stick the tag, the Mighty Ducks, on Disney’s hockey team.

Maybe Eisner’s just a traditionalist. Walter J. Frisch of Seal Beach Leisure World sent a cartoon to our office he thought we’d all get a kick out of. It’s a Donald Duck strip showing Donald insisting the store owner sell him the biggest pair of ice skates he had.

In the final scene, Donald is the goalie on a hockey team and he’s using the skates to eat up all the space in front of the net. The cartoon ran nationwide on Dec. 11, 1941. Writes Frisch: “Is there any doubt that Donald Duck played hockey?”

Hitting the Big Time: I don’t know how you feel about jury duty, but one of the least attractive features to me is the pay.

Maybe $5 a day stretched farther when that fee was first introduced. The Judicial Council of California, which sets policy for state courts, says it will come up with new legislation in 1997 to raise a juror’s pay to $40 a day. Unfortunately, the higher pay won’t kick in unless you serve a second day. But if you serve more than 30 days, it would go up to $50 a day. The council also has plans to help out single parents who need reimbursement for child care costs in order to serve on juries.

Wrap-Up: The astronomy professors at Saddleback have big plans for 1997. They’re in the midst of setting up a system to pick up the sun through radio waves. Said Kim: “We’ll have an image of the sun through the visible [the observatory] and the invisible [through radio-wave satellite dishes]. It will greatly assist us in our research.”

Also, Kim and company plan to share the observatory even more with the community next year. They are making plans to bring in elementary school classes to see its operation. Maybe there will be a Mitch Haeri or James Thomas among them.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com