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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Jorge's 10" mirror cell 2018-01-05 |
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| This is a Ralph designed mirror cell made out of 3/4" Baltic Birch. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Jorge's 10" red tube gets its first coat of paint 2018-01-05 |
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| Jorge's tube gets its first coat of read paint. That will not be missed on the observing field during the day. |
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Paul finished his 14 inch f/4.4 mirror. 2017-12-17 |
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| Paul finished his 14 inch f/4.4 mirror. It's 1/6th wave with a 0.9 Strehl and it's extremely well polished. The Pyrex blank for this mirror started out as a thick 12.5 inch that was melted in Mike's kiln and made into a relatively thin 14 inch. Congratulations Paul! |
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Twelve inch 11th wave Zerodur 2017-08-29 |
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| After some serious experimenting that started with a thin 16 inch and continued with this 12 inch Zerodur mirror allowed us to figure out how to use a swirl (circular) stroke that would beautifully parabolize a mirror. More to come on this. |
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Brad finished an awesome 10 inch mirror 2017-07-29 |
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| Brad finished his 10 inch mirror also during the 7-29 8 hour figurathon. We were on a roll with the better than 1/6th wave mirrors and another stunning polish. Next stop is Spectrum Coatings. |
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Allen finished a thin 16 inch mirror 2017-07-29 |
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| Two weeks after Mike and Ralph finished their mirrors we had another double-header. On 7-29-2017 Allen finished a 16 inch f4.66 at better than 1/6th wave after a marathon 8 hour figuring session ending in a swirl stroke. More about this mirror on his web page at www.knology.net/amaroney |
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Mike finished a honeycomb 12.5 mirror 2017-07-15 |
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| On 7-15-2017 Mike finished his 12 inch light weight honeycomb mirror. Mike used a home-made CNC machine to make the hexagons that later made rubbery forms that made the actual hexagons that were placed in his kiln with the glass to make this mirror. Where is the darn easy button? More about Mike's 1/6th wave mirror is on his web page www.mdpub.com . |
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Ralph finished a thin 12 inch mirror 2017-07-15 |
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| Also on 7-15-2017 Ralph finished figuring his 12 inch thin mirror. At less than 1 inch thick Ralph chose the more traditional way to have a light weigh mirror. This is an extremely well polished better than 1/6th wave mirror |
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Kelly Anderson testing his new dew heater controller 2017-06-10 |
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| Kelly Anderson testing his new dew heater controller that he built at the Mirror Lab. The power supply is showing at 13v the two dew scrips are drawing 0.548 amps |
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Dario and Devin;'s scope gets first (day)Light 2017-04-07 |
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| The scope focused beautifully on the 1/2 mile away target and shortly after the Moon. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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