ALUMINUM COATING FOR OPTICS AND TELESCOPE MIRRORS Price List and Shipping Coating Care Events and Links Questions? telescope mirror coating We have coated many amateur telescope mirrors for John Dobson of the Sidewalk Astronomers and for the Telescope Makers Workshop at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. We do some commercial coating now and then. Our coating is aluminum with silicon monoxide over-coating.  In the last year more than half our work has been re-coating old telescope mirrors.  Building a Telescope  The program includes mirror testing methods, basic optics and wave theory of optics. The program is supplied on a CD disk which can be browsed with the Safari Browser, the Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Firefox Browser or any general purpose browser.  Telescope making C/D, including mailing, $5.   ALUMINUM COATING 807 Rutherdale Ave San Carlos, Ca. 94070 3733 alcoat@comcast.net  Coating Status The coating machine is out of service at this time. We expect to resume coating within the month. Problem is due to a frozen vacuum pump which is away for repair. June10, 2017.  Eclipse Warning There is no gain in using a large aperture telescope for the eclipse. Thermal air turbulence will undo any potential gain due to aperture. Best to leave your light bucket at home in the shade. The prime focus image will blind you in a few milliseconds. Cardboard tube can be set ablaze. Do you plan on spending your entire eclipse time guarding the scope from a crowd of the curious?