LSST Mirror Casting (Patrick Stevenson)

Contains: Landscape

LSST Mirror Casting

This picture was taken for National Geographic magazine just after completion of casting of the LSST mirror in the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab where I worked as the Supervisor of Polishing for ten years, after my retirement from a thirty year military career. I worked on a total of five 8.4 meter mirrors including LBT, GMT, MMT, and a number of secondary mirrors. This was the most satisfying and challenging job I had in my fifty years of working. My wife and I can barely be seen in the upper center of the image. While working at the Lab I wrote a Process Procedure that documented the complete process from Casting, through Grinding and Polishing, and Integration of the finished mirror into it's structural Cell. I also wrote two articles published on Cloudy Nights that briefly describes Casting and Polishing.

https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/my-other-telescope-is-an-84-meter-part-iii-polishing-r3193
https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/my-other-telescope-is-an-84-meter-part-ii-casting-r3189

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Cloudy Nights

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