No. Household mirrors have flat planar surfaces. Telescope reflector mirror are curve to have a focal point.

Posted by Stanley W, on January 28th, 2009, at 10:29 pm. #.

No they are not flat for two different reasons. Telescope mirrors are generally concave mirrors, and since they are concave they have the ability to “focus” light. A flat mirror would not work, and the more important factor is this.

The mirrors in your house are just regular glass with a reflective surface on the back of the glass. So light actually has to pass through the glass before it reaches the reflective surface, and then after it reflects it has to pass through the glass again. As light passes through the glass it slows down because glass has a different refractive index than air. On a curved (or concave) mirror this would create all kinds of problems……….So mirrors that are going to be used in telescopes for observing will have the reflective surface on the FRONT of the mirror, so light does not have to pass through another medium (glass) at all before being reflected.

Posted by kbilyak04, on January 31st, 2009, at 3:45 am. #.

You CANNOT use household mirrors in telescopes.

Household mirrors are flat, whereas telescope mirrors need to be round, so they can reflect the light to the eyepeices.

Posted by Wedge, on February 2nd, 2009, at 5:02 pm. #.

no… a typical cosmetic mirror is not engineered to be especially accurate (which is why some mirrors make you look skinnier/fatter than you are)… they are also not shaped/curved properly to achieve any reasonable reflection/refraction into a lense

Posted by EVOX, on February 3rd, 2009, at 7:03 pm. #.

No.

Reflectors have two mirrors in them, the primary mirror, and the secondary mirror.

Both of them are silvered on the front portion of the mirror so the light doesn’t have to travel through the glass to be reflected. Regular house hold mirrors are back silvered, and the light does have to travel through the glass. This would cause chromatic aberration and loss of reflected light in a telescope.

The primary mirror on a reflector is shaped slightly like a bowl. This is called concave. In most reflectors this shape is a parabola, but in some types of reflecting telescopes, it’s spherical. In either case, the shape of the primary has to meet exact specifications for the light to be reflected properly.

The mirrors also have to be free of any microscopic defects.

Posted by minuteblue, on February 6th, 2009, at 7:39 pm. #.

lol, telescope mirror look like this : () or )(
while house mirrors look like this: II

Posted by Ansel T, on February 7th, 2009, at 8:19 pm. #.

More akin to your cosmetic mirrors that magnify, with the exception of a more precise grind, and type of coatings.

Posted by hilltopobservatory, on February 8th, 2009, at 7:22 pm. #.