Saint Petersburg Astronomy Club - Mirror Lab

Location

We are looking for a new home
As soon as we have the new location set we will post the location and hours here.

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.

04/12/2012 more

Members

  • Ralph Craig - Lab Instructor
  • Allen Maroney - Lab Instructor
  • Ron Jones - The Figurer
  • Mike Davis - Casts Mirrors
  • Dimitri - Support

Friends

  • James Lerch - Robo Foucault
  • Matt Terry
  • Charlie Mullen
  • Bruce Kazcmarik
  • Keevy McAlavy

In Memorium

  • Irv Nadelhaft
  • Lenny Remetta

04/12/2012 more

Welcome

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.

  A 10 inch mirror goes from a blank to aluminized in a week!
2002-09-21
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.

  Our Vacuum Aluminizing chamber comes online
2002-09-07
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.

  We snap pictures of asteroid 2002 NY40
2002-08-18
Asteroid 2002
NY40 flew past Earth early in the morning on August 17th. It flew by at a distance of 530,000
kilometers or roughly 1.3 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. NY40 is approximately 800
meters wide and appeared near the bright star Vega. James Lerch took the images.

  8 inch Rafflescope winning from OBS 2002
2002-02-28

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