Molten Light is a public, ground-up engineering project building a 1-metre class robotic telescope from first principles, starting with spin-casting a borosilicate honeycomb mirror blank in a purpose-built rotating furnace. The project documents every subsystem—from the furnace to autonomous observatory software—in full technical depth through public research logs. The core bet is that spin casting can bring large-aperture optics down to a cost and complexity a small team can carry.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Large-aperture telescope optics, particularly 1-metre class mirrors, remain prohibitively expensive and technically out of reach for small teams and independent builders. Traditional mirror fabrication requires thick solid blanks and extensive grinding, demanding infrastructure and resources that are inaccessible outside of major institutions or commercial foundries.
Solution
Molten Light is a public, ground-up build of a 1-metre class robotic telescope that engineers every subsystem from first principles, starting with the glass itself. The central technical programme is spin casting a borosilicate honeycomb mirror blank in a purpose-built rotating furnace, which produces the parabolic figure directly from the melt and removes most of the material that would otherwise be ground away. The honeycomb structure provides the stiffness-to-mass ratio required at this aperture without the weight of a solid disc, while borosilicate makes the process feasible at workshop scale. The project continues through interferometric figuring, vacuum aluminium coating, a structurally and thermally analysed optical tube assembly and mirror cell, a mechatronic mount, and autonomous observatory software for unattended nightly operation. Every phase produces a research log with full technical depth, published openly so the thinking can be scrutinized and corrected while it is still possible to do so.
Target Audience
The primary audience is technically sophisticated readers with expertise in glass science, optical metrology, control systems, or related engineering fields, as well as enthusiasts who want to follow a rigorous, open-source telescope build from the ground up.
Features
- Spin-casting process for borosilicate honeycomb mirror blanks that produces the parabolic figure directly from the melt, eliminating most conventional grinding
- Purpose-built rotating furnace designed from first principles for workshop-scale glass casting
- Interferometric figuring and vacuum aluminium coating processes for optical finishing
- Structurally and thermally analysed optical tube assembly and mirror cell design
- Mechatronic mount engineered for accurate tracking without flexure
- Autonomous observatory software for unattended nightly operation
- Public research logs documenting full technical depth of every subsystem, from furnace design to dawn parking software