Small, but mighty, Monterey astronomy institute continues making scientific advances

MARINA — Tucked beyond an expanding shopping center and a row of recently built houses off Highway 1 lies a cluster of Fort Ord-era buildings. In these structures — which once were a top-secret military training facility — astronomers investigate faraway worlds.

The Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy is a privately-funded nonprofit astronomical observatory dedicated to research and education. Today, about a dozen astronomers and six community scientists comb through data provided by their observatory on Chews Ridge in the Los Padres National Forest. Donations from the group Friends of MIRA and grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation fund their work.

Although the institute is small, its scientists have published innovative research during its 50-year history.

For instance, according to Bruce Weaver, director and co-founder of MIRA, the institute’s scientists were the first to apply machine learning to astronomy in the early 1990s — Weaver trained a computer program to categorize stars based on a characteristic that identifies the substances in their atmospheres. Additionally, a recently published study documents how researchers used a special tool to learn features about a type of star responsible for releasing ingredients to make new galaxies.

“The vast majority of high impact astronomy research is conducted at large universities, (but) MIRA has been bucking this trend for 50 years,” said Daniel Cotton, a research astronomer at MIRA and lead author of the new study. “Our (recent) discovery … is just the latest example of this. It reaffirms that with public support, a small institution can punch above its weight and reveal new things about the universe we live in.”

Breaking away from universities

In the early ’70s, a group of graduate students at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio was unhappy about their job prospects. They didn’t want to work at a university because that meant teaching in conjunction with conducting research.

Instead, in 1972, the six astronomers, one mathematician and two spouses founded MIRA, the first private observatory to open in the U.S. in the 20th century. This way, they could devote their full attention to research and avoid the bureaucracy accompanying federal funding and university affiliation.

Building their workplace came with other advantages, according to Weaver. “Since we weren’t associated with a university, we could pick any place in the world to do astronomy,” he said.

After settling on the U.S. because of Americans’ support of private philanthropy, the team needed to choose a region to place their main research telescope. The East Coast’s atmospheric conditions are poor, the air down south around LA contains too much light and pollution and the skies north of San Francisco are filled with clouds, Weaver explained.

“So that leaves you with the Los Padres National Forest,” he said. “Lick Observatory (near San Jose) had done some studies of one of the mountains there and found that the stability of the images was much, much better than other places.”

With that in mind, the co-founders placed their research telescope on top of Chews Ridge, approximately 5,000 feet above sea level in the Santa Lucia Range above Big Sur. They finished assembling the 5.5-ton instrument in 1977. They named the entire structure the Oliver Observing Station in honor of scientist Bernard M. Oliver, who donated a sizeable amount of money to pay for the station’s construction.

While the telescope snaps pictures of the night sky from the forest, MIRA’s offices, computing and educational facilities sit approximately 40 miles away in Marina. The institute acquired these buildings in the 1990s after the Army base at Fort Ord closed.

This campus is where astronomer Cotton sifted through data gathered by a special new tool attached to MIRA’s research telescope. The instrument helped him figure out how the shape of a specific type of star is distorted. Using this technique, Cotton and his research team found that a star called Beta Crucis is about 11 million years old and 14 times as massive as the sun. Scientists are interested in hot, massive stars like Beta Crucis because when they die, they produce the majority of the materials found in space.

This discovery is only the beginning, though.

“One star is interesting, but a lot of stars is data,” said Cotton, explaining he will measure more stars over the next few years. “If you want to find out what the galaxy is actually doing and how it’s going to evolve, then you need to know how all these heavy stars are living their lives.”

In addition to research, MIRA’s scientists devote themselves to education. A smaller telescope housed in the Weaver Student Observatory at the Marina campus is available for intern projects and public events. An amateur astronomy club also meets regularly in the main office building, and MIRA hosts scientific talks at Monterey Peninsula College. They plan on having their first public lecture since the COVID-19 pandemic began in a couple of months.

Overall, the scientists at MIRA are dedicated to learning about the magnificent objects beyond Earth and teaching others about them.

“Most people don’t spend the majority of their day thinking about (the universe), but they spend some fraction of their time occasionally wondering, ‘Everything’s so big. Where do we come from?’ ” Cotton said.

“And we’re the part of society that gets to try and answer those questions for everybody else.”