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.

Large Aluminizing Chamber ONLINE
2004-01-04

Total Lunar Eclipse
2003-11-08

Saturday
November 8th, 2003
Total Lunar Eclipse

A movie of the event is available:
AVI (1.7MB) | href=images/movies/Eclipse_11-03_Divx.avi>Divx (1 MB)

We were at the Science Center most of
the evening. The clouds made it difficult to see during totality but before and afterwards it
was good viewing.

Lunar pictures by James Lerch

Laser Interferometer goes online
2003-10-04

Radio Telescope ’sees’ first light.
2003-10-04

Mars Closest Approach in 60000 years
2003-08-03

Mars Closest Approach in 60000 years

On the night of Tuesday August
26th Mars made its closest approach to the Earth in over 60000 years. Mars was only 34,646,418
miles from Earth at 5:51am EDT (early Wednesday morning).

src='images/marsimage4_2.jpg'>
On the night of closest approach. Picture imaged with a cheap $20 camera held up to the
eyepiece.

2003 Date	Location	Time
August 16 Saturday	Gulfport Casino	10pm -1am
August 22 Friday	Science Center	9:30pm -1am
August 26 Tuesday	Science Center	9:30pm -1am
August 29 Friday	Gulfport Casino	9pm -1am
August 30 Saturday	Science Center	9pm -1am
September 5 Friday	Gulfport Casino	9pm -1am
September 6 Saturday	Science Center	9pm -1am
September 20 Saturday	Gulfport ArtWalk	8:30pm -12am
September 26 Friday	Science Center	8:00pm -10pm

New Image Database Available
2003-06-15

Total Lunar Eclipse
2003-02-22

Several Members of the lab were interviewed by local tv channels 10 and 13 during the total lunar
eclipse.

Our Aluminizing Chamber is Demonstrated to the Public
2002-10-25

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.

Public Viewing the Night of October 12th 2002
2002-10-12

This is the 10 inch rafflescope during collimation
the afternoon before the public observing.

Oct 12, 2002 Pinellas County Science
Center Members of the St Petersburg Astronomy Club converge for the first public viewing of
the 2002-2003 observing season.

The club's optics lab performed the first star-testing of
the just completed 10inch rafflescope.

size=+1>CLICK HERE for more information about the
rafflescope

Paul and Pat admire Ralph's daughter Casey's 6" f 4.5 "Blue Star" scope.

The weather was
hot, humid and cloudy (but at least we could see the first quarter moon). About fifty people
attended this event with many recently built telescopes shown off by club members.

src="images/recession_sm.jpg">
A 3 inch f6 built by Tom. It looks like a nice scale model of a truss telescope but it actually
works.

Tom's other (full size) telescope.

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.

Goto Page