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Concept
Southern African Large Telescope
Summary
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 9.2-metre optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy. It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1-metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 by 9.8 m. However, its effective aperture is only 9.2 m. It is located close to the town of Sutherland in the semi-desert region of the Karoo, South Africa. It is a facility of the South African Astronomical Observatory, the national optical observatory of South Africa.
SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. It enables spectroscopic and polarimetric analysis and imaging of the radiation from astronomical objects that are out of reach of northern hemisphere telescopes.
It is closely based on the Hobby–Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory, with some changes in its design, especially to the spherical aberration corrector. The main purpose for these changes was to improve the telescope's field of view. It shares the same fixed mirror altitude design, which limits access to 70% of the visible sky.
First light with the full mirror was declared on 1 September 2005, with 1-arc-second resolution images of globular cluster 47 Tucanae, open cluster NGC 6152, spiral galaxy NGC 6744, and the Lagoon Nebula. The official opening by President Thabo Mbeki took place during the inauguration ceremony on 10 November 2005.
South Africa contributed about a third of the total of US20 million for the construction of the telescope, US10 million for operations). The rest was contributed by the other partners: Germany, Poland, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
SALT is located on a hilltop 1837 m above sea level in a nature reserve in the Hantam, Karoo north-east of Cape Town, near the small town of Sutherland. In March 2004, installation of the massive mirror began. The last of the 91 smaller mirrored hexagon segments was put in place in May 2005.
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