Latest News
May 19 – A Night Under the Stars
May 11, 2017
Join ShiAnne Kattner, MMTO queue observer, on Friday, May 19 at the historic Hacienda de la Canoa for her presentation on the total solar eclipse that will occur on August 21. Her presentation is at 6:30pm with stargazing following at …
Smithsonian Lecture Series on Astronomy – 2017
Nov 21, 2016
The 47th year of this series will begin on January 11 with the first of five lectures. This series is held on Wednesdays at the Green Valley Recreation Center at 9:00am. Each lecture is 45 minutes, followed by a question-and-answer …
Roadwork December 12-16
Nov 07, 2016
There will be equipment operating on Mt Hopkins Rd at km 12.6, just below the gate, starting on Monday, December 12. Operations will not close the road, but equipment will block the road at times. Please coordinate passage through this …
Road Work near Summit – Completed
Oct 08, 2016
The heavy equipment operations just below the summit has been completed. Some finishing work with rock and gravel will be done to the parking lot at the summit in the future. We will post that timeline here when we receive …
Fun Video!
Oct 04, 2016
Check out a brief, captioned video of the actual aluminization of our primary mirror and hear comments by our staff during the process.
Aluminization Details
Oct 04, 2016
The MMT primary mirror was successfully recoated on September 2, with the coating being uniform across the entire mirror. The measured reflectivity in the blue (at 400nm) is 91.6%, the best achieved at the MMT to date. A minor …
Smithsonian Institution Position
Oct 03, 2016
A Public Affairs Specialist position is open with our colleagues at the F.L. Whipple Observatory at Mt. Hopkins. It closes on Oct 31.
Adaptive Optics (AO) Upgrade
Sep 12, 2016
Our AO system (f/15 secondary) will be undergoing significant renovation beginning in 2017 and will be unavailable for an estimated 18 months. Improvements to the system will include new software and hardware, a realuminized secondary mirror, and upgrades to …
Bell Jar Lift
Aug 24, 2016
To prepare for realuminization of our primary mirror, a bell jar was lifted in place to ready for the recoating shoot. A video provided by C. Beck of Marco Crane, who attached his GoPro to the crane hook, shows a unique …
Aluminization Preparations
Aug 01, 2016
On July 26, MMT staff stripped the aluminum coating from our 6.5m mirror to prepare for its realuminization in a few weeks. Using various cleaning agents, some mopped while others sprayed. Soon only a small portion of coating remained, revealing the honeycomb …