16" Lightweight Sandwich Parabolic Telescope Mirror A Primary Telescope Mirror You Have Always Dreamed of Start Price USD 0.99 Current Price USD 735.00 Time Left - Bid Count 20 Buy It Now Price USD 1,500.00 Reserve Price - Start Time Friday, August 29, 2008 End Time Monday, September 08, 2008 Location Arlington, VA See more about '16" Lightweight Sandwich Parabolic Telescope Mirror ' Description It is ready to ship from U.S.! !!!!!!!!!!FRUAD ALERT: We have never asked, and will never ask any of our customers to pay our items to any third party.  You should always pay the item via paypal within eBay/Paypal system !!!!!!!!!!!! This is a state of art,  professional fabricated,  F/5, revolutionary patent pending lightweight sandwich primary parabolic telescope mirror (http://www.hubble-optics.com/products.html)  made of the top quality precision annealed plate glass. The mirror structure has been optimized using the advanced Finite Element Analysis Modeling. It has very short thermal equilibrium time even without fan. The overall thickness of the mirror is about 2". It is tracked by S/N 08-04-16-11K(S12C11N22), with the test result given below. Our PV (Peak to Valley) test result is given in wavefront profile, not the surface profile. The minimum PV of the surface profile rating of a mirror should be 1/8 lambda, the minimum PV of wavefront profile rating of it should be 1/4 lambda. Optical Aperture (Diameter): 16.00" Coating: The standard aluminum coating with SiO protection overcoating, 88% reflectivity Radius of Curvature (ROC): 162.26" Focal Length: 81.13" PV (wavefront): 1/13.6 RMS: 1/42.8 Strehl Ratio: 0.978 For international bidders, please make sure to use the Shipping costs tool to estimate the shipping cost before you place bid! Please also provide your phone number during check out. Both UPS and USPS require the phone number for the international shipping. For Non-US Customer, you may have to pay Custom fees, import duties  to receive the package. FAQ : 1: Is there any performance difference between mirrors made of Pyrex and mirrors made of Plate glass? The short answer is, believe it or not, there is none. You may want to read Four Infamous Telescope Myths by Gary Seronik at: http://skytonight.com/howto/visualobserving/3305656.html?page=2&c=y The article only evaluated small mirrors, but the conclusion is actually true regardless of the size of the mirror.   You may also want to read: http://www.mtwilson.edu/vir/100/mirror/ This is the site for the 100" plate glass mirror of Hooker Telescope, the largest solid glass mirror ever built. If those bubble filled, layered, plate glass has been good for the 100" solid glass mirror for almost 100 years; our top grade modern day plate glass with far much better quality must be good for a much smaller and much better structured mirror. The 100" Hooker mirror does take much longer time to cool down than the 200" Palomar telescope mirror primarily because the much more efficient honeycomb structure is used in the Palomar telescope mirror. You can learn more on this on our web site: http://www.hubble-optics.com/products.html   2: What kind of mirror cell should be used for this mirror? An 18 points flotation mirror cell is recommended. To be conservative, you can treat the mirror as a solid mirror with equivalent thickness of 1.2", and design your mirror cell accordingly.    What our customers are saying: Last night I had “first light” with the 12.5” f/6 mirror that you recently supplied. It is truly a magnificent optic! Ronchi, knife-edge, and star tests were straight out of a textbook, and the image of Saturn was breathtaking. Despite the thin substrate, there is no hint of astigmatism. Frankly, when I purchased a Hubble Optics mirror on eBay, I was skeptical of the advertised wavefront quality. For the low price, it just seemed too good to be true. In the future, I will not hesitate to recommend your firm’s optics to friends and acquaintances. ...... Tom DobbinsContributing Editor, Sky & Telescope magazine (quoted by permission)   I’ve tried buying fast 8” mirrors twice through A-mart and both were dogs – terribly undercorrected, probably spherical. This mirror is way different. Stars are near pinpoints and there is no tendency to astigmatism (at least nothing that didn’t come from my eyes). I went out tonight and looked at Jupiter as soon as it became visible. Even so, it is getting pretty low in the sky and the air was pretty wavy. As near as I could tell, in the moments of stillness the images were as good as any scope I own.Star testing showed even images that were very nearly the same inside and outside of focus. Using my EZ tester (ronchi eyepiece) showed nice straight lines and no hint of TDE.As far as I can tell this mirror is a winner and will suit my needs very well. Whether or not it actually meets the specs listed on the box I can’t tell without getting it tested. But its a lot better than the other Ebay mirrors and I like it. I wouldn’t be afraid to buy another Hubbleoptics mirror... Dave Chadsey   I just tentatively assembled my 10" F4.7 1/17 PV wavefront mirror in my observatory and watched Jupiter and the moon last night. Although the air condition was terrible due to middle of rainy season, optical performance was exactly as I expected! The surface of Jupiter was amazing. Contrast of color was deep and details were very sharp, image edge was knife cutting, even through hazy bad seeing. The surface of the moon had an extra contrast; very very sharp edged landmark was attractive enough to keep watching hours. A hair splitting and breath taking experience, which reminded me of previous mirrors. I need to further tune up optical performance of this scope such as replacing with smaller high precision secondary mirror etc. Will report further progress. Kazuki Yamane     More eBay Feedback we have received (Over 260 great reviews!) Nice views with this mirror. Star tests are very good. One word: amazing. Amazing packaging, amazing service, amazing product. Amazing. alles bestens, sehr schnell geliefert Great! the mirror is wonderful. Thank you again! My Truss Dobson is ready tonight the first Light, Optic ist wonderfull fast service, good foucault images and rhonchigram, great deal! Great mirror, better than expected, wunderbar, AAA+++ Verry good quatity.Great star test results. Will purchace from this seller again Thanks. Tripple packed! Even UPS can't break that.. Bien reçu ! SUPER EMBALLAGE ! Merci, à bientôt Nice looking mirror. This is the second transction in a week. That says it all Installed and saw Jupiter beautifully! Packaging EXCELLENT. A++ WARNING!!!: NEVER LOOK AT OR HANDLE THE MIRROR UNDER THE SUN!  THE REFLECTION OF THE SUN LIGHT MAY CAUSE BURNING OR INSTANT AND IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO YOUR EYE.  EYE DAMAGE IS OFTEN PAINLESS, SO THERE IS NO WARNING UNTIL IT IS TOO LATE. CHILDERN SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO HANDLE THE MIRROR. Place a Bid!