Education: Lopez School may someday have an observatory

If teacher Jennifer McFarland has her way, Lopez students will someday have a multi-use observatory complete with daytime and nighttime telescopes, star charts and references, a high school/elementary astronomy mentoring program, and field trips to observatories.

McFarland is Lopez’s new math teacher and she is jumping into Lopez’s new astronomy program with both feet.

McFarland is teaching four sections of astronomy to a total of 30 students as a part of Lopez School’s new flex class program. Astronomy is a highway to getting kids into math and science, McFarland said.

“It hooks them into it,” she said. McFarland, who moved to Lopez from Flagstaff, Ariz., with her husband (a teacher in the elementary school) and three children, was involved in an astronomy program for seven years. In the year before moving to Lopez, she was able to build, through grants, a student observatory with a roll-off roof, a 16-inch telescope, as well as smaller telescopes, charts and references.

McFarland and her husband often worked as a team in Flagstaff, with her high school students mentoring and teaching his elementary students about astronomy, something they are both interested in getting started at Lopez School. McFarland is searching for grants that can be written to fund a Lopez student observatory. In the meantime, she is trying to get a white light filter telescope from Flagstaff to Lopez.

With a white light filter telescope, students can safely look at the sun. Students could learn to identify sunspots or cooler areas of the sun. McFarland is also trying to bring a hydrogen alpha filter telescope from Flagstaff; this particular telescope would allow students to look at a specific frequency of light. Students would be able to see the bubbling and frothing that happens on the sun’s surface.

The Lopez students may also use remote telescopes. According to McFarland, through the use of LOPARC, a system that allows students to operate telescopes from a remote area, the students could sit in the Lopez classroom and operate a telescope in Flagstaff.

McFarland also hopes that a class trip to the student observatory in Arizona may someday be possible.

For now, the Lopez students have been busy studying moon phases, tides, eclipses and the Zodiac. In addition, the class has been trying to plan a star party for the evenings. So far, the weather has not cooperated with them, but the plan is to meet at the tennis courts on the first clear night at 7:30 p.m. Community members, star enthusiasts and astronomists are welcome.

“If anybody wants to come help I’d be happy to have them,” McFarland said.

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