Every season, Dr. Whitney Shane, one of MIRA's senior astronomers, writes a short essay highlighting interesting objects in the night sky. The main section of each essay centers on an important topic in the history of astronomy, which are briefly summarized below. The archives date back to the Spring of 2003. For further MIRA history, visit the Newsletter archives that date back to 1993.

2006

Fall [pdf]
The Great Andromeda Galaxy, M 31, as it ages..

Summer [pdf]
The star Vega and the determination of the stellar magnitude system.

Spring [pdf]
The history of the Hubble Classification Scheme.

2005

Winter [pdf]
Selected Areas and the statistical distribution of stars in the sky.

Fall [pdf]
All about the Pleiades open cluster.

Summer [pdf]
Mass accretion in the center of the Milky Way.

Spring [pdf]
The life and death of Quasars.

2004

Winter [pdf]
Molecular matter in the insterstellar dust of the Milky Way.

Fall [pdf]
The Cygnus Rift and dark cloud bands in the Milky Way.

Summer [pdf]
The structure of planetary nebulae and the oddity of the Cat's Eye Nebula.

Spring [pdf]
The galaxy NGC4258 and the discovery of extra-galactic radio jets.

2003

Winter [pdf]
Messier object 83.

Fall [html]
Determining interstellar distances with the moving cluster parallax method.

Summer [html]
Different populations of stars.

Spring [html]
The distribution of galaxies and galactic clusters.