Thanks, Patrick. That was an amazing major astro event for Utah as a whole and Steve and 1.75 meter Mike personally.
From the story, it sounded like it might be a left over mirror from the Manned Orbital Laboratory military space flight - the precursor manned spy satellite to Keyholes? If so, that in itself would be a major piece of space history. MOL was featured in a recent Nova broadcast.
Perhaps Steve or Mike could take some photos of the new mirror and make a short presentation on one of the summer SLAS monthly meetings. To throw in my usual 2-cents, Mike is probably thinking in terms of building a private scope. Considering the size of such a project, as a contigency plan if his building program does not pan out, he might want to consider joining forces with the UofU's roboscope initiative. That would create the world's largest publically accessible roboscope and put the State on one leading edge of public astronomy. - Kurt (To the Trib's Shelia, if it is the MOL mirror, that's a 1/4 - 1/2 page article right there.) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/astrospies/ Nova Astrospies program 2-2008 MOL on Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory