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FIRST-LIGHT INSTRUMENTSProvision has been made within the SALT Project Budget for a suite of so-called 'first-light' instruments: facility instrumentation available to all SALT partners on completion of telescope commissioning. A figure of $4.8M (FY1999) is currently 'ring fenced' for the funding of these instruments, which will be built by some of the SALT partners, currently the South African Astronomical Observatory and the Universities of Wisconsin, Rutgers and Canterbury.
The choice of this initial suite of instruments needs to be viewed in terms of the science drivers and technical capabilities of the SALT partners. The partners benefit from the science capabilities of the instruments and are taking the lead in their construction. Identifying key niche areas of research, where SALT can be competitive with similar sized, but larger budget, telescopes will be important. Since SALT is primarily a spectroscopic facility, the roles of the various instruments may be assessed in terms of the most efficient methods of sampling in both wavelength and space. The assignment of roles to the spectroscopic instruments requires consideration, not only of wavelength range and spectral resolution, but also how one multiplexes both spectral and spatial information (i.e. 3-D datacubes) onto 2-D detectors with limited pixels. For SALT there is significant emphasis on the prime focus instrumentation, which will specialize in making use of access to the spatial dimension (i.e. the science field of view of 8 arcminutes in diameter). |