Talk:McDonald Observatory
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There are some errors in the account of the attack on the 107-inch mirror:
The fellow that did it was not a janitor but a newly-hired optician's assistant who was doing poorly in his job. He tried to break the mirror with a hammer and, when that failed, shot at it. I doubt that the mirror is made of tempered glass, which I think would have disintegrated. The mirror was damaged; but the astronomers simply cleaned out and ground smooth the fractured glass, resilvered the mirror, and painted the damaged areas flat black. The area damaged is tiny compared to the total area and made no detectable difference, even though it is near the middle.
I did a lot of work at the observatory around that time and saw the damaged mirror the next day. I also got accounts directly from those involved. The perpetrator had been seen earlier watching the Tonight Show, which that evening featured an interview with a fellow who had been in the news for shooting up a Coke machine. I personally think that this was his immediate inspiration, that he thought destroying the mirror would get him similar fame.
Robert Leonard Nelson, Jr. lionelsoni@aol.com
