Mahon is really out of this world
SANTA MONICA COLLEGE If a hammer and a feather were dropped at the same time, which object would hit the ground first?
“The hammer,” a group of 5-10 year olds responded to the question on Thursday, their legs dangling from the bolted-down chairs at the SMC Planetarium.
It’s the instinctive answer that Galileo once proved incorrect in a famous experiment where he stood atop of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped two balls of different weights to prove that all objects fall at the same rate.
The acting head of the planetarium, Jim Mahon, 52, snapped on footage of an experiment done by Apollo 15 in January 1971 when an astronaut demonstrated the hammer versus feather question.
“The kids looked at that and go ‘huh’?” Mahon said on Thursday, chuckling as he remembered his earlier educational session with the kids from the Fun Ship Children’s Center in Hawthorne.
His constant interaction with the community and especially with school kids is one of the greatest perks of Mahon’s job as the caretaker of the Santa Monica College Planetarium, a position he has held since 2005 when the late Jon Hodge left his post as the planetarium director after 26 years.
Employed on a contract basis, Mahon overseas the planetarium’s school field trip programs and serves as the primary lecturer for the Friday evening public shows.
“Everything I hear, including from Vicki Drake, chair of the Earth Sciences Department, he’s done a wonderful job so we’re very glad to have Jim Mahon on board,” SMC Spokesman Bruce Smith said on Friday.
One of Mahon’s strongest skills appears to be his ability to interact with children and to explain astronomy concepts in a way that a young child could understand.
For example, in explaining that there is no absolute frame of reference in space, he took the kids from the Fun Ship Children’s Center on an imaginary roller coaster ride through a mobius strip, projected on the planetarium ceiling. There is no up or down or absolute frame of reference in space, he said.
The roller coaster ride on the mobius strip — similar to the Star Tours simulator ride at Disneyland except the seats don’t move — was so realistic that some of the kids screamed.
Getting paid to impart his knowledge of astronomy and to spread his infectious love and joy for something once considered to be a hobby wasn’t what Mahon had in mind for his future when he began building spaceship engines for Rocketdyne in Canoga Park years ago.
The UCLA graduate who earned a bachelor’s degree in history doesn’t even have formal education in astronomy.
Walking around the planetarium, Mahon talks about how he grew up a fan of the stars in the sky, about the night he first saw the rings on Saturn, and how he is trying to continue the strong foundation that Hodge had laid out for the SMC planetarium.
It was more than 25 years ago when Mahon first glanced through his roommate’s outdated telescope and saw the rings of Saturn. Two weeks later, an inspired Mahon purchased his own telescope, an event that ultimately led the astronomy buff to be the current telescope operator at Griffith Observatory.
“I thought it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen,” Mahon said.
After 14 years at Rocketdyne, Mahon was laid off from the rocket design and production company.In 2003,he was hired to be the planetarium lecturer for the Griffith Observatory at its satellite facility at the Los Angeles Zoo. After renovations were completed and the observatory reopened to the public, Mahon signed on to become the telescope operator, retiring his duties as the lecturer.
It was the perfect job for someone who enjoys directly interacting with the public. He is the voice in the telescope observer’s ear, directing the person to look to the left in the eyepiece, to notice the shadow in the backside of a planet’s ring. He’s the person who thrives on seeing the telescope observer look through the eyepiece in awe at the natural beauty before them.
“I don’t care if they become astronomers,” he said. “I care that they exercise their mind and think.”
Colleagues at Griffith Observatory thought so highly of him, Mahon was recommended to fill in for the school field trip program at the SMC Planetarium for Hodge when he left the school.
At the end of the first show at SMC, Mahon spoke to Hodge on the phone and asked him to come back to the planetarium for a visit.
“It’s not going to happen Jim,” Hodge replied at the time, saying he wanted to visit but couldn’t because of his illness.
About a month after the conversation, Hodge passed away.
“This was his baby, this was his love,” Mahon said. “He was trying to make sure that the programs continued, that the community outreach continued.”
And so Mahon continues the community outreach programs, by hosting the Friday night planetarium shows and drawing about 30 people every week. “Any good I do here, I do it for Jon,” Mahon said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 9, 2007. Read the original PDF.