GENERAL NEWS

  • The SALT Annual Report 2022 (also available as a high resolution pdf) includes science highlights, an introduction to the SALT partners, operations news and feedback on outreach & education....

    06 April, 2023

  • The SALT Annual Report 2021 (also available as a high resolution pdf) includes science highlights, an introduction to the SALT partners, operations news and feedback on outreach & education....

    12 April, 2022

  • The SALT Annual Report 2020 (also available as a high resolution pdf) includes science highlights, an introduction to the SALT partners, operations news and feedback on outreach & education....

    18 September, 2021

  •   At their November 2019 meeting in India, the SALT Board commissioned a study to explore the feasibility of pursuing the development of the SALT mini-tracker concept. The study report, along......

    01 November, 2020

  • SALT’s Stategic Objectives The brochure outlines SALT’s strategic objectives ranging from enabling world-class science to driving human capital development....

    04 September, 2020

  • What does multi-wavelength observations mean? The illustration above shows our own galaxy in a variety of wavelengths. See the descriptions in the top right of each individual image to know......

    08 December, 2017

  • Spectroscopy is the most important tool for an astronomer. It unlocks the hidden characteristics of objects too remote to be studied directly – things like the chemical composition of stars, the temperature, pressure and motion of interstellar gas clouds, the structure and mass of galaxies, and much more....

    03 November, 2017

  • Image: an RBG image of NGC 1365 created by Dr Marissa Kotze, taken using SALT. Images with telescopes are taken in various filters and are then combined to create colour......

    19 September, 2017

  •   On a clear dark night, the view of the night sky from Sutherland is spectacular. An arch of light known as the Milky Way stretches overhead. This is the......

    22 August, 2017

  •   Novae are stellar explosions that take place in binary stellar systems. During these explosions, the star’s brightness increases by many orders of magnitude, and then fades to its initial......

    06 October, 2016

  •   A bright Supernova (SN) candidate was detected by an automated SN survey called ASAS-SN using a small automated telescope in Chile in the morning of Sep 21st.  The new......

    02 October, 2016

  •   A supernova, a star that just ended its life in an explosion, was discovered yesterday (Feb 8, 2016) in a nearby galaxy known as Centaurus A.  The galaxy is......

    10 February, 2016

  •   What does SAMS mean? SAMS is an acronym for the SALT Array Management System. It comprises a set of sensors mounted on the mirror segments connected to racks of......

    30 November, 2015

  •   What is accretion? The broadest description of accretion is this: Material falls onto an object. But of course, if that were the full story, throngs of astronomers would be......

    30 November, 2015

  •   HRS is the High Resolution Spectrograph used at SALT. It can observe faint objects with extremely high accuracy, and thus can be used for most, if not all, kinds......

    30 November, 2015

  •   “Two Russians, a Finn, and a Jew come into a bar” seems like the beginning of a joke. In fact, it is really “two South Africans, a Russian and......

    12 July, 2015

  •   Imagine getting an observation with a 10m class telescope done from anywhere in the world… It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound. Remote observing gives astronomers the opportunity to......

    12 July, 2015

  • In Memorium Darragh O’Donoghue was a truly remarkable man and an extremely talented scientist. He contributed enormously to astronomy, South Africa and, most profoundly, to the lives of his many......

    11 July, 2015

  •   Stars are massive bodies – the sun, which is a middle of the road dwarf star, has a mass of 2 billion billion billion tons. The crushing weight of......

    13 May, 2015

  •   At the heart of all planetary nebulae is a star hot enough to ionise the gaseous envelope that we see, usually a white dwarf. Curiously, some planetary nebulae only......

    13 May, 2015

  •   I wonder what James Dunlop was thinking when he stumbled across one particular nebula with his telescope from suburban Sydney in 1826. In the fledgling colonial Australian city, far......

    04 April, 2015

  •   The MASTER-SAAO robotic optical transient detection system consisting of two 0.4m telescopes. Following the installation of the robotic MASTER SAAO optical transient detection system in December 2015, some 27......

    04 April, 2015

  • The first image of Comet C/2015 G2 MASTER taken by the MASTER-SAAO telescope on 8 April 2015. The image was produced from adding together four exposures taken in different coloured......

    13 March, 2015