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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Brent and Joey finished their 10 inch mirror 2015-06-06 |
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| Brent and Joey proudly display their amazingly well polished 10" f/5 mirror. it came in better than 1/6th wave with a Strehl of .93. Congratulations! |
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Dimitri building a dew heater controller 2015-06-06 |
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| Dimitri (right), with a little help from Paul, built a dual channel dew heater controller at the lab today. We should have seven of these keeping our telescopes dew free within a couple of weeks. |
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Clean SkyGlow filter 2015-04-30 |
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| This SkyGlow filter was turning into a mold growing machine. A little 91% Isopropyl Alcohol and a few cotton balls cleaned it up beautifully. This same approach has worked well on eyepieces in pretty bad shape. If the optics are bad use distilled water first to get any grit off. Always pat with the cotton ball, don't wipe unless there is no choice. Wiping may scratch the optics. Do not use Alcohol on coated corrector plates or bad things happen (really, I know). Distilled water and cotton balls has worked for us. |
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Tom Spano's Newton Telescope Replica 2015-04-29 |
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| Tom did a beautiful job building this working replica of the original Newtonian telescope. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Unusual Press 2015-04-29 |
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| This lap is ready to start it's press. The parchment paper on the lay is used to prevent adding more correction to the center of the mirror during figuring. The shape helps feather out he contact area. |
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Dew heater test circuit 2015-04-29 |
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| This is the low voltage cutoff test of the new lab dew heater circuit. It has dual controls and will cut off power to the heaters at and below 10v to save the battery. It uses a programmed PIC 16F88 microcontroller as the brains. |
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Distorted pitch pattern 2015-04-29 |
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| The distorted pitch lap pattern was caused by the BVC mirror sticking to the lap after the pour. When we finally separated them this was the result. |
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Joey and Brent Hilker join the ATM community 2014-08-27 |
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| Joey and Brent are a few hours into grinding a 10 inch mirror here. They have perfected the teamwork to keep the grit crunching sound at the optimal levels. |
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Paul tuning up the Meade 16 inch focuser 2014-08-27 |
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| Paul really got into this project. He stopped the trunnions from slipping on the tube and fixed the focuser. Clearwater Fundamental Middle School has a monster telescope ready for the sky now. |
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George Fatolitis cleaning 16 inch Meade mirror 2014-08-27 |
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| George brought in a Meade 16inch Dobsonian telescope from Clearwater Fundamental Middle School. The mirror was coated with dust and the mechanics of the telescope need a bit of work. After a couple hours of work it all came together and George left with a beautiful telescope for sharing he night sky with the kids. |
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