Steward Observatory Mirror Lab

The base of the rotating furnace at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, University of Arizona, 14 January 2012. This furnace is used for the casting of very large and very precise telescope mirrors. At the time this image was taken, the molten glass temperature was approximately 1050 degrees centigrade. This mirror is one of the seven 8.4 meter segments for the Giant Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

See more here: mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/