The page you are viewing is taken from an exhibit called MIRA: Exploring the Universe from the Central Coast.
The exhibit ran from 1 July through 24 September 2000 at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.

A three-color composite photo of the Ring Nebula (M 57) taken by
Dr. Arthur Babcock and Dr. Whitney Shane through MIRA's 36-inch research telescope.

Star Formation
Discovery that the long-believed (over 30 years) correlation between spectral emission-line strength and age of very young stars is not true through statistical studies of hundreds of just-formed stars.

Discovery that application of current theories of the evolution of just-formed stars to observations leads to impossible behavior, i.e., the current theories must be wrong.

Discovery of a yet-unexplained relationship between the pattern of light variability of just-formed stars and their spectral emission-line strengths.

Unsuccessful search for just-formed stars and dwarf cool stars in the Coalsack region of the Milky Way (also at Warner & Swasey Observatory).

Two detailed studies of properties of an association of hot young stars in the region of Cygnus.

Invention of a technique to determine the inclination of the axis of rotation of single spotted stars.

* Successful search for just-formed stars in the region of the Horsehead Nebula in Orion using data gathered at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. Stars are also being monitored for erratic changes in brightness.

Two multi-week photometric and spectrophotometric around-the-clock international (U.S. and Soviet Union) observations of just-formed stars, leading to the discovery that several of these stars have both bright and cool "starspots" on their surfaces. Also discovered at MIRA was a relationship between the emission-line strengths and the amplitude of total variability.

Stellar Classification
Invention of a new system, the first in 40 years, for the classification of ordinary stars in the red- and near-infrared regions of the spectrum.

Application of the artificial intelligence method of artificial neural networks for the classification of ordinary stars in the MIRA classification system. This was the first computerized method that could classify stars better than the best human classifiers.

These artificial neural networks were also applied to the classification of Wolf-Rayet stars (very rare, hot and massive stars) and to the difficult problem of classifying the components of combined spectra of binary stars. This technique is now being tested for its application to the detection of skin cancer.

Faint Red Stars
Search for flaring dwarf red stars in the Coal Sack (also at Warner & Swasey Observatory).

* Systematic spectroscopic search for new dwarf flare stars (with Pomona University).

* Monitoring of flare stars for spectroscopic signature of massive flares.

Spectroscopic analysis of faint giant red stars discovered by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) satellite.

* Search for periodic variability in a bright calcium line star.

Individual Objects
Discovery of a very rare "symbiotic carbon" star in the southern hemisphere. Dubbed Weaver’s Star in honor of the discoverer.

Discovery of a proto-planetary nebula; a star, near the end of its life, about to eject a shell of high-speed gas from its surface.

Discovery of a star, behind the Pleiades cluster, which is very similar to the Sun but underwent a massive eruption from its surface. Such an eruption on the Sun would probably destroy most life on Earth. This surprising discovery recently made national news.

Collaboration with Austrian astronomers in a multinational study of one of the hottest stars visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

Discovery of a new hot star that had just explosively emitted a shell of gas.

Discovery of two new signs of yet-unidentified interstellar material in the regions of massive star formation in near-infrared light.

Study of Sun-like stars in a distant cluster far from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy (with University of Rochester).

Discovery of one of the brightest just-formed stars.

Major Observing Projects/Catalogs
* Study of gravitational lenses to determine the size and age of the Universe and the nature of the stellar and sub-stellar population of objects in a distant galaxy.

Study of hundreds of hot stars with spectral emission lines.

High accuracy catalog of far infrared measurements of cool, just-formed stars taken with the IRAS.

Atlas of spectrophotometric measurements of Wolf-Rayet stars.

One-year simultaneous site survey of astronomical conditions at Chews Ridge and Anderson Peak, showing they are among the best terrestrial sites in the U.S. for optical astronomy (with United States Naval Observatory).

Atlas of stellar classification of stars on the MIRA near-infrared system.

Spectroscopic search of suspected emission-line stars. Although several rare and unusual stars were discovered, most of the stars had been inaccurately designated as containing emission lines.

* Monitoring of unstable, bright, hot stars known for semi-periodic ejection of shells of gas from their surface (in collaboration with students and amateur astronomers at the Bette M. and William R. Weaver Student Observatory).

Techniques
First one-meter class telescope to use roller-drive tracking. Now adopted for most one- to three-meter class telescopes.

First professional observatory specifically designed to minimize local air turbulence from heating.

Development of a 30-channel simultaneous photometer.

Development of a technique for recovering calibrated spectrophotometry from uncalibrated Schmidt telescope observations.

Evaluation of mounting telescopes on the NASA space station.

Theory
* Development of a computer model of non-thermodynamic equilibrium (NTE) radiative transfer in moving stellar atmospheres.

Development of a theory for the extremely accurate determination of the temperature of red dwarf stellar flares.

Investigation of the possibility that massive comets in the Oort Comet Cloud could account for the missing mass.

Computer models of the effects of bright and dark starspots on the variations of color and intensities of spotted stars.

Some Interesting but Unsuccessful Research
Search for planets through high-precision multi-object photometry (with French collaborators).

Spectrapolarimetry of impact sites of Comet Shoemaker-Levy into Jupiter (with Washington University).

Search for spectroscopic variability of Vega, the basic calibration-standard star.

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