14 DAY TRIAL // Five years after the inauguration ceremony, the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) project has released its first colour images, marking the achievement of 'first light' and the successful debut of full operation for SALTICAM, a $600 000 digital camera designed and built for SALT at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).
SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, and equal to the largest in the world. Gathering more than 25 times as much light as any existing African telescope, SALT can detect objects as faint as a candle flame on the moon. The sample images now released for the first time were taken during the camera's first trial period of operation, which also achieved SALT's first significant scientific results.
A major recent milestone was the installation in May of the last of the 91 hexagonal mirror segments that comprises SALT's mammoth primary mirror array, stretching 11 metres across. Another major milestone, which we are marking today, is attaining "first light" with the telescope's full array of mirrors and its new imaging camera, SALTICAM. The biggest milestone for 2005 will be the official opening of SALT on 10 November 2005 by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
SALT is truly representative of the century in which it has been built, since not only is it a sophisticated computer controlled precision instrument, but it is also an Internet-age telescope. No longer will it be necessary for astronomers in the consortium to travel to SALT to use it. Instead they will submit their observing requests over the Internet and eventually, once the observations have been conducted by the dedicated SALT operations staff, they will also receive their data over the Internet. In many respects this makes SALT far more like a spacebased telescope, like the Hubble Space Telescope, than its ground based cousins. The operational model for SALT, with SAAO operating the telescope on behalf of SALT's partners, will also be far closer to the way a telescope in orbit operates.
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