Upcoming Programs
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Children's Program Saturday, February 15, 2025 7 PM "Making and Using an Astrolabe"
Program is Full Family Night Friday, February 21, 2025 8 PM
Public Night Monday, February 24, 2025 8 PM "Life of the Sun"
Please register online or email for reservations. All reservations MUST be made by 1PM the day of the event.
Check out the video of the new telescope installation!
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The MCAO mirror blanks were ordered in 2019 from Schott Glass in Germany. The mirror is made of Zerodur, a low thermal expansion ceramic. The mirrors had an interesting journey. Schott Glass, in Mainz Germany, was ready to ship the blanks just as the pandemic took hold. The blanks were considered "non essential" and had to wait a few months for shipment. Once on their journey, they travelled from Mainz to Frankfurt Germany on June 15, 2020. From Frankfurt, they went to Paris, then to Chicago, and to Denver, finally arriving arriving in DFM's Optical Lab. The mirror arrived at MCAO on June 4, 2024.
The aspherical grinding of the primary mirror was completed at the end of August 2020. The primary mirror will be a f/2.2 concave hyperboloid. The secondary mirror will amplify the primary beam to f/4. It is interesting to note that the 24 inch telescope primary mirror would fit in the new primary mirror's central hole. The picture on the right shows the mirror in its crate, arriving at MCAO!
Renee Delaap (pictured above) is the DFM optical technician. She is in charge of turning the blank piece of Zerodur into MCAO's 1.3 meter telescope mirror. She is in the process of moving the mirror from the test cell to the polishing machine. Dr. Melsheimer is helping. You can see his hand in the picture on the right.
Fabricating a 1.3 m mirror is a time consuming process. The mirror has been ground with a coarse grit. It is now in the polishing stage, which is done with a finer grit. A lap is used to polish a telescope mirror. The above picture shows the MCAO mirror in the polishing machine with a T lap and round lap. The mirror blank moves in a counter clock motion while the two polishing laps move up and down. The next step will be the figuring process.
The telescope has arrived at Mt. Cuba! These pictures shows the mirror in its crate and lifting it from its crate to place in the mirror cell. The mirror is covered with protective paper.
The image on the left shows the mirror cell rear actuators, and the image on the right shows the mirror in its cell.