Our Founder
Paul McNabb founded the mirror lab in 1997 in order to create the best amateur telecopes possible.
Inch for inch our mirrors surpass store bought or commercial grade scopes.
Where the 19th Century Art of Mirror Making Meets the 21st Century
The Saint Petersburg Mirror Lab is a small band of dedicated mirror grinders and telescope makers living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. We offer a mirror making class for interested persons. We strive to create the best mirrors our home brew technology can muster. This includes robotic foucault testing and laser interferometry.
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Eric Finishes his second mirror a 12.5 inch 2007-04-02 |
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| FYI,
Eric finished his mirror today. It tested 1/6th wave or better on all
axes tested. This frees up a table if anyone wanted to work on a mirror???? RC |
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Mirror Lab Video for Charlie 2007-03-31 |
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| Here is 17 minute video of how Robo Foucault works. Allen and Ralph describe how to test a mirror. Watch it in Internet Explorer (wmv) or |
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Website Update 2007-02-25 |
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| The Mirror Lab website has been updated. There are still lots of things to be done with the website but the majority of pages have been updated. We've added a new feature |
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Charlie is leaving for the clear skys of New Mexico 2006-12-23 |
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Ginger completes an 8 inch Mirror 2006-10-28 |
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| Ginger Tiling has finished figuring her 8 inch mirror. It has an f/ratio of f/5.6 and was completed on October 28th. Congratulations. |
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The first ever mother-daughter team is making a 10 inch mirror 2006-08-26 |
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| Megan sets up the mirror for testing with Robo. | |||||||||||||||||||
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2007 Raffle Mirror is finished. 2006-08-26 |
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| The 2007 OBS Rafflescope Mirror was completed. On robo foucault it tested out to 1/15th wave. Of course we now have to build the scope to hold it. |
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Hazel Gehlsen newest Mirror Lab graduate 2006-06-03 |
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| Congratulations to Hazel Gehlsen
who completed an 8 inch f/6
mirror that tested better than 1/9 wave! Hazel is also the first woman to complete a mirror in the lab. She did such a good job on her 8 inch we'd thought we'd get her to help out on an 18 inch as well. |
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Completed Mirrors For October 2005-10-25 |
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| Allen 12.5 inch annual refiguring Tom Spano 14.25 inch Black BVC Glass Joe Colontonio 10 inch (used a special mesh for his pitch lap) |
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New Mirror Graduate Steve Kane 2005-05-28 |
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| Congratulations to Steve Kane who completed a 10inch f/5.6 mirror that tested better than 1/5 wave. |
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