Latest News
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 …
Observing Schedule
Jul 27, 2016
The September-December MMT observing schedule and program titles can be found here.
SHELS
Jul 22, 2016
The SHELS (Smithsonian Hectospec Lensing Survey) is a complete galaxy redshift survey covering two fields. The first field, available here, was recently published by astrophysicist Margaret Geller (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). It includes over 9000 new galaxy redshifts obtained with the …
Summer Shutdown
Jul 21, 2016
The MMTO is in summer shutdown. Work has started on prepping the mirror for stripping, scheduled to take place on July 26. Check back here for pictures! Realuminization will follow in a few weeks. We will reopen for scheduled …