Multiple Mirror Telescope to be disassembled

The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) and the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC) are taking apart the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory (Mount Hopkins, AZ) to replace the current array of six 72-in.-diameter mirrors with a single stiff, lightweight, 6.5-m borosilicate honeycomb mirror. The 20-year-old telescope is in excellent working order, but the $20 million conversion project will increase the telescope's light-collecting area by 2.5 times and its field of view by approximately 15 times. Disassembly should take six weeks. First light for the improved telescope will be mid-to-late fall 1998.