Questions tagged [mirror-making]
Questions about the fabrication of mirrors for reflector telescopes.
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Would it be possible to create a telescope from a hanging reflective cloth?
A chain suspended on two points hanging under gravity forms a curve called a Catenary, which can look pretty similar to a parabola. I'm not sure if this generalizes to the two dimensional case where ...
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Can you advise on the construction of a large segmented primary mirror (hobbiest)?
I am interested in experimenting with the building of a large parabolic primary mirror constructed from 4" hexagon mirrors mounted on a "rough" parabolic surface with either 3 screw ...
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Why telescope mirror glass shipped as randomly broken chunks of a constant size in cardboard boxes?
The video MIRROR LAB: Preparing for Casting GMT's Mirror 6 shows the unpacking several hundred boxes full of broken glass from OHARA, packed in styrofoam.
The glass chunks are a fairly uniform size of ...
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Why are these telescope mirror makers not upside down? (Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope)
The new open access Solar Physics article The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope – Observatory Overview is the first of several papers about the new state-of-the-art solar observatory. For more info see ...
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How to make a 65 cm lens with a 20 cm hole in it for a Hamiltonian telescope?
This answer to What (the heck) is a Hamiltonian telescope? Is this one? confirms that the telescope in the question linked there is indeed as described and that the first lens is a full 65 cm aperture ...
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Why are telescope mirrors made of glass?
Optical telescope mirrors are typically made from endlessly polished glass surfaces that have been aluminised to provide a very smooth surface of reflective aluminium.
But why the need for glass at ...
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Why is this telescope so short? How hard is it to make such a fast primary?
The recently discovered object C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) is in the news because it might have an eccentricity greater than one, which means it might be from outside the solar system, though not necessarily.
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How is it ensured that a parabolic shape forms while polishing a telescope mirror?
I understand polishing the mirror with a successively finer abrasive can create a curvature, but how is it possible to obtain a uniform curve that forms a parabola while polishing by hand?
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Need advice on mirror-making for a home-made amateur reflector [closed]
For example, what would be some good references to read first? What sort of glass slab should I use? What size; diameter and thickness. Im a first-time builder trying to build one
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