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.

Comments

Impressive Telescope!

[Nerd Systems]

I read some of the details about this, and saw that this telescope can pick up light as small as a candlepower on the moon's surface. That is a pretty impressive light-gathering ability if I have ever seen one... not even the night vision goggles that the military uses has that good of light-gathering. That is a pretty impressive ability to gather light that dim, which is very valuable on a telescope, being able to pick out the faintest of galaxies very far away, as well as seeing the effects that black holes and the like, can have on galaxies in the very distant reaches of space.

It is amazing how good optics are becoming these days... which doesn't just apply to astronomy, bu can also be applied in other areas... areas that can affect all of us one day, and not just for space exploration. So many technologies that have been honed in the space program, have found their way to our use as public citizens. This is a wonderful thing for all of mankind.

Imagine the technologies that are honed with this project being released to the mainstream public down the road... such concepts as more efficient fiber-optics, with light beams being no longer needing fibers to travel across large distances, but simply having a transmitter and receiver on each end, using such optics as this telescope uses, and not being bothered by fiber cuts and the like...

Astronomy is a wonderful hobby, but at the same time, so many things can be contrived from designing technology to see the heavens... which can help out mankind in ways that we have yet to dream of...

As a sidenote, this server seems very slow, so for those trying to check things out, and not able to see anything as a result of the slashdot effect that I am sure is cripping these servers, check back at a later time to see some wonderful images that this telescope has presented to scientists. Astronomy has always been a wonderful hobby and very valuable scientific tool to the science community.

Depending on how we define what?

[Greeger]

It is the equal largest telescope in the world depending on what measurement? Height? Width? Resolution? I don't like it when news stories use those kinds of boasts because they are so vague. For all we know that could mean that the telescope has the same number of people working for them as the other large telescope.

Cost-saving measures

[mirni]

about a tenth cheaper than its nearest competitor
----

Definition of 'nearest competitor' aside, I'd be very interested to know in what ways savings of such magnitude were realised. Cheap labour shouldn't account for much, here.

-m-

So... how long till we see other planets?

[cool_number_9]

I graduated at the Optical Research Group of my university and while I was doing something completely different, a few people were working on nulling interferometry, a technique used to cancel all the light of the star, thereby allowing the light of the surrrounding planets to filtered through. For this to work, you need telescopes at different places. So they actually want to build an array in space or maybe they already did that.

With this high sensitivity of this new telescope, I'm just wondering if an array could be built on earth. Then we can really start looking for nice warm little planets...

Re:So... how long till we see other planets?

[MaynardJanKeymeulen]

You should have paid more attention.
Such telescopes exist.

Re:So... how long till we see other planets?

[nbarriga]

So they actually want to build an array in space

Actually, the cost of building a space telescope is enormous. I think the budget for Hubble was somethink around $US 1 billion , the same as ALMA(http://www.eso.org/projects/alma/) or the VLT(http://www.eso.org/paranal/) even though Hubble is a very small telescope. And since the main problem with surface telescopes( athmosphere's refraction) has been overcome using active optics, i don't think it's necessary to put another space telescope.

Southern Sky

[RocketRainbow]

Mmm... we're looking at the same stars.

I love my Southern sky. As an Australian, I can't say "I love a sunburnt country", but I love the Magellanic Clouds, the Southern Cross, the Pliades... Looking up is how I know I'm home.

And of course your photos won't show bizarre things like the upside-down-moon!

It's about darn time people started putting more effort into the southern sky. You can just survey for a night and show up interesting things down here!

Re:I remember when Nixon talked about SALT

[MaynardJanKeymeulen]

You're either quite funny or extremely stupid.

Cheap telescope

[photonic]

The nice thing about this telescope is that the whole design is aimed at keeping it cheap. To start with it is almost a direct copy of the Hobby-Eberly telescope, so go there if SALT is slashdotted. Reusing a design of course saves a lot and there will not be a lot of redundant science since HET is located at the northern hemisphere and SALT at the southern. The project has a lot of international partners, but obviously the South African astronomy community is the big winner here.

Then the design of the telescope, this is very uncommon to keep costs down: First of all the telescope cannot cover the whole sky, it has a fixed elevation (something like 40 degrees?) and can only rotate around its vertical axis. This saves of course a lot of mechanics and has as an added benefit that the structure will have a constant sagging due to gravity. The cost you pay is of course a limited view of the sky, but there is plenty to see in the part that is visible.

The second innovation is that the shape of the mirror is not parabolic, as in most telescopes, but spherical. This has two benefits: first, all the mirror segments can be produced with the same curvature, which is cheaper than custom segments as for Keck. Secondly, you can change the elevation of your telescope (over a limited range) without moving the main mirror by rotating the rest of the optics from a point in the center of the sphere (this is possible because of spherical symmetry of the mirror). The downside of the spherical optics is that the optical aberations of the system are more severe than for a parabolic mirror, so you need to add some extra optics to compensate. This is no big problem since HET and SALT are not built for making nice pictures, but primarily for spectroscopy, for which a big light collecting area is more important than the best possible imaging system.

404 errors, Here is a better link:

[qualico]

Getting 404 errors on the main page when trying to view the images?
Alternatively, they can be viewed here:

http://www.saao.ac.za/news/salt_light.html

Using, my Celestron 9.25" last night here in the north, sure gives you an appreciation of these images and what bigger light buckets nets you.

Showed my wife M57, (Ring Nebula), for the first time.
Albiet, it was washed and faint, its a worthy experience to see things with your "God's Eye".

Can anyone here, who has toured a large telescope, comment on how the captured images compare to the live views?