MMT Observatory

The Whipple observatory complex is located on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, US (55 km south of Tucson) in the Santa Rita Mountains.

Several technologies pioneered at the MMT contributed to the success of the subsequent generation of large telescopes.

One solution to this problem was found by Roger Angel of Steward Observatory, of the University of Arizona, which casts mirrors having a honeycomb structure, in the interior of a rotating oven.

[4] While other adaptive optics designs do their corrections with additional mirrors, minimizing the number of warm surfaces in the light path produces better results in infrared wavelengths.

From 2004 to 2010, approximately 8% of MMT observing time was made accessible to the entire astronomical community via the US National Science Foundation's Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP), administered by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).

A rectangular building about the size of a small apartment block stands on a mountaintop, with a vehicle parked in front of it. The building has a wide opening in its front and top, exposing an internal framework structure that holds and somewhat obscures from view a hexagonal arrangement of six circular primary mirrors. In the background, the sky is hazy, hiding the horizon and most of the terrain below the mountain.
The MMT in 1981, showing its six primary mirrors