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

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.

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...