Science with SALT
Astronomers from southern Africa and SALT partners in the UK, the USA, New Zealand, Poland and Germany will use SALT to tackle fundamental questions about how the universe works. How did giant planets like Jupiter form? What is their relationship to the 'failed stars' we call 'brown dwarfs'? Why are the assemblies of billions of suns we call galaxies organised in 'bubbles', 'walls' and 'superclusters'? On the largest of scales, how did the universe begin, and what will it become? What is the nature of the most violent events in the Universe, namely Gamma Ray Bursters? What is the Dark Matter content of galaxies? How do accreting objects 'cannibalise' material? To answer such questions, astronomers must analyse virtually nothing - the light reaching Earth from a distant galaxy can easily be a hundred million times too faint for the eye to see. Buried in such incredibly weak signals is information that can lead to a deeper understanding of the laws of nature as well as new insights into planets, stars, black holes and galaxies.
Synpotic Observations of Variability
