Introduction
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere and among the largest 5 or so in the world. It has a hexagonal primary mirror array 11 metres across, comprising 91 individual 1.2m hexagonal mirrors. Although very similar to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas, SALT has a redesigned optical system resulting in a larger field of view and effective collecting area.
SALT can detect the light from faint or distant objects in the Universe, a billion times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye - as faint as a candle flame would appear at the distance of the moon. The telescope and instruments are designed to operate from the near ultraviolet to the near infrared (320 to 1700 nm), and offer some unique or rare capabilities on a telescope of this size.
SALT is funded by a consortium of international partners from South Africa, the United States, Germany, Poland, India, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The construction phase was completed at the end of 2005 and from 2006 to 2009 it entered a period of commissioning and performance verification, during which some science observations were obtained. However, some problems with the telescope's image quality were uncovered early on, resulting in blurry images over the outer field, which necessitated taking the telescope off-line to effect a fix, which was completed by mid-2010. Observing is now in full swing and the telescope is finally realising its huge potential as Africa's Giant Eye on the Universe.
Call for proposals for 2012 Semester 1 (1 May to 31 Oct) opens on 20 Jan 2012.
SALT's Image Quality: Progress & Status by Darragh O'Donoghue (277MB .avi file)
Location
- SALT (foreground) is situated at the SAAO's observatory near Sutherland. The older and smaller telescopes can be seen at the other end of the plateau.
SALT is situated at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) field station near the small town of Sutherland, in the Northern Cape province, and is ~380 km from Cape Town. This site, in the arid Karoo region, was established in the early 1970's and was chosen for its dark and clear skies and good weather conditions. SALT is operated under contract to the SAAO on behalf of the SALT partners as a fully queue scheduled telescope.
