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The Mirror Lab is making mirrors for the most powerful telescopes of the future.

The world wouldn't have many new powerful optical telescopes – or be planning still more powerful future telescopes – if it weren't for the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory beneath the east side of The University of Arizona's football stadium.

The Mirror Lab is the only facility in the world that produces the giant, single-piece, lightweight telescope mirrors that are revolutionizing astronomy.

Steward Observatory now offers public tours that give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at how the mirrors are made. Steps include mold construction, spin-casting in the lab's unique rotating furnace, and polishing and testing mirrors, all using unique technologies developed and perfected at the Mirror Lab.

Tours are Tuesdays and Fridays, either mornings or afternoons, depending on the lab's scheduled work activities. Tours cost $15 per person, which helps defray costs for running the tours, and are open to adults and children at least 7 years old. Visitors are required to wear closed-toe shoes for safety and are encouraged to bring their cameras.

Make reservations by phone, 520-626-8792, or e-mail, mirrorlab@as.arizona.edu.

Steward Observatory also arranges Mirror Lab tours for school and other groups.

The Mirror Lab is about to begin making a new mold for a 21-foot mirror to be cast later this year for a telescope at San Pedro Martir, Mexico. Steward Observatory will offer the public opportunities to watch the dramatic "high-fire" part of the casting next September or October.

The Steward Observatory Mirror Lab has provided large, high-quality optics for the world's most powerful telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope atop southeastern Arizona's Mount Graham. This telescope has twin 27-foot, or 8.4-meter, diameter mirrors mounted side-by-side, giving it the light-collecting power of a single 39-foot mirror and image sharpness equivalent to an 75-foot telescope.

World-class telescopes that feature Mirror Lab 6.5-meter, or 21-foot, diameter mirrors include the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., and the Magellan telescopes in Chile.

The talented team of about 40 Mirror Lab employees is now grinding and polishing mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Both instruments will probe the universe as no telescope has ever probed before.

The Giant Magellan Telescope, to be built in Chile, will have a primary mirror consisting of six off-axis mirrors around a seventh on-axis central mirror. Each mirror will be 27 feet in diameter. The GMT will have four-and-one-half times the collecting area of any current optical telescope and the resolving power of an 84-foot diameter telescope, or 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The 27-foot diameter Large Synoptic Survey Telescope mirror, which is the largest two-surface mirror ever made from a single substrate, also to be built in Chile, will begin digitally imaging the entire available night sky every three days in the next decade. It will be the deepest, fastest and widest digital eye of the new digital age.