Tours

A tour of the Mirror Lab on the University of Arizona campus offers a unique opportunity to experience how UA innovations are producing the world’s largest telescope mirrors right here on campus. This tour provides visitors with a behind the scenes look at the ground breaking work being done at our facility located under the UA football stadium. Cutting-edge optical technology and the revolutionary spin-casting processes are making telescope mirrors which will produce images never before seen with such power and clarity.

Our current endeavors include the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), as well as, the San Pedro Mátir Telescope. The LSST will take time-lapse digital images of the entire night sky every three to four days; providing the widest, fastest and deepest scans ever captured by a single telescope. The GMT is the result of 100 years of astronomical research and telescope building that will open new vistas of exploration for the next generation of astronomers. The GMT will be even bigger and better than the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) which is now considered the most advanced telescope ever built.

These new generation giant optical telescopes will be changing the way we explore the Universe! Allowing astronomers to break the boundaries of astronomy and the universe, peering back towards the beginning of time in an effort to answer a vast array of astronomical questions and make new discoveries.