Slashdot Mirror
SALT Telescope First Light
carnun writes "On the 1st of September, 5 years after ground breaking, the SALT Telescope released their first light images to the public. Yesterday one of these images was even displayed on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website. The Southern African Large Telescope, built in South Africa, is the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere and (depending on how you define it) the equal largest telescope in the world, but built at a budget of only $30 million, about a tenth cheaper than its nearest competitor. The official opening of the telescope is scheduled for the 10th of November, but scientific observations are already a regular occurence. (Disclaimer: I'm the software engineer responsible for the main telescope server.)" Perhaps as an added bonus carnun could even be persuaded to participate heavily in the discussion. Either way, sounds like a cool project to be a part of.
I haven't been able to get to the site so I'm writing this based on my understanding of regular telescopes. Which can gather lots of light mostly because they're huge. You simply cannot get this kind of light gathering ability in a hand held device, they're too small.
And in all likelyhood the whole of SA gets slashdotted as well. Seriously - for a South African it is very irresponsible to put up large image files that every nerd wants to see and then link them from Slahdot.
Freedom of speech doesn't come with bandwidth.
Site seems to be holding up. I guess having some of the slowest international bandwidth in the world helps sometimes.
Though I doubt many people outside of SA are going to be able to access it.
East Coast Brewers
How much is that figure expressed in units of "days of war in Iraq" ? And since the main problem with surface telescopes( athmosphere's refraction)
What about atmospheric absorption of certain wavelengths, earth's rotation during long exposure times, light pollution, dust/scattering in the atmosphere, etc ?