Richard F Caris Mirror Lab

At the University of Arizona's Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory, a team of scientists and engineers are making giant, lightweight mirrors of unprecedented power for a new generation of optical telescopes. These mirrors represent a radical departure from the conventional solid-glass mirrors used in the past. They have a honeycomb structure on the inside; made out of Ohara E6-type borosilicate glass that is melted, molded and spun cast into the shape of a paraboloid in a custom-designed rotating oven. Honeycomb mirrors offer the advantages of their solid counterparts - rigidity and stability - but they can be significantly larger, and dramatically lighter. The Richard F Caris Mirror Lab team has developed a revolutionary new method to polish the honeycomb mirrors with a deeply curved, parabolic surface that results in much shorter focal lengths than conventional mirrors.