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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New Image Database Available 2003-06-15 |
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Total Lunar Eclipse 2003-02-22 |
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| Several Members of the lab were interviewed by local tv channels 10 and 13 during the total lunar eclipse. |
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Our Aluminizing Chamber is Demonstrated to the Public 2002-10-25 |
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| James Lerch does a demostration of the new aluminizing chamber during a meeting of the Saint Petersburg Astronomy Club. The meeting was held at the Science Center of Pinellas County. A short video of the event is available. |
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Public Viewing the Night of October 12th 2002 2002-10-12 |
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 This is the 10 inch rafflescope during collimation the afternoon before the public observing.
Oct 12, 2002 Pinellas County Science
The club's optics lab performed the first star-testing
of
The weather was
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A 10 inch mirror goes from a blank to aluminized in a week! 2002-09-21 |
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| Due to an unfortunate event the 10 inch mirror for the 2003 rafflescope was ruined. James Lerch and Paul Kristle worked around the clock in shifts to regrind and polish a 10 inch mirror from scatch to finish. |
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Our Vacuum Aluminizing chamber comes online 2002-09-07 |
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| Build from parts scavanged on ebay James Lerch has created a vacuum chamber that will coat (aluminize) mirrors upto 10 inches in diameter. Positioning the heating elements to ensure an even coat was one of the difficult parts. |
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We snap pictures of asteroid 2002 NY40 2002-08-18 |
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8 inch Rafflescope winning from OBS 2002 2002-02-28 |
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