Talk:Southern African Large Telescope

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South Africa Mid‑importance

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A fact from Southern African Large Telescope appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 March 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the biggest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere will be the Southern African Large Telescope, opening later this year?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/March.

Wikipedia

Untitled[edit]

Some other source claim the project took $30 million USD. One had to be wrong, but I am lazy to look for a third source. See paragraph below

But it cost the South African government $10m - the remainder of the $30m cost was borne by universities and research bodies around the world. [1]

Remote control[edit]

I can't find any reference to remote control anywhere in Google. Will SALT really have a remote control option? Rnt20 06:13, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe Greg misunderstood whatever source he is using ... participation in controlling the facility could imply shared administrative or planning control and not physical control of the telescope (which I cannot see the reason for). Maybe Greg could state what his source is? Elf-friend 06:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what Greg was referring to either. As far as I know there are no current plans to run the telescope remotely. It is difficult enough to run with local operators. The minimum number of people they have planned to run the telescope is two - a SALT Operator and a SALT Astronomer. AmberRobot 13:59, 3 April 2006 (CDT)

"Currently"[edit]

Grumble If you state that something is "currently" true, please add a date! smurfix 12:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tower[edit]

Anyone know what the tower is for? The official website doesn't say, and neither does the HET-Website. --BjKa 10:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The tower houses the Center of Curvature Alignment Sensor (CCAS) system that allows the operator to ensure that all 91 segments of the primary mirror are acting as a single mirror. I'm surprised that the HET wikipedia article does not describe this, as it is the telescope design that makes these two telescopes so unusual. If I have time I can try to write up some basic information about the mirror and its alignment system. AmberRobot 19:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal[edit]

An overly large percentage of the South African Astronomical Observatory article is devoted to SALT. It should make more sense to move most of that information in the Southern African Large Telescope article (leaving just a short summary) and expanding the South African Astronomical Observatory article to cover more of the history of SAAO and the other telescopes they operate. --NJR_ZA (talk) 23:59, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and completed this merger. --NJR_ZA (talk) 19:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aperture size[edit]

What does 'nominally 9.2 meter aperture but up to about 77mx ~9.8 m diameter aperture' mean? I cannot find the 9.2m aperture anywhere on the SALT website, nor can I find what '77mx ~9.8m' means. I've changed this to 'primary mirror consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1 meter inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 m x 9.8 m.', with reference to the website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2pem (talk • contribs) 09:16, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've also updated the collecting surface. A 9.2m aperture indeed gives 66m^2 collecting surface, but since the origin of this number is unclear I've instead used 91 * sqrt(3)/2*1m^2 = 91 * 0.87m² = 79m². Although the hexagonal segment size is '1m inscribed circle', given that 11 segments in a row give a 11.1m primary mirror, I've assumed it is instead 1.0m per segment, which would give a reasonable ~1cm spacing between segments to give the total 11.1m primary mirror size.2pem (talk) 09:32, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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Performance issues?[edit]

The issues with the performance troubling the instrument between 2006 and 2010 should be mentioned.

O'Donoghue, Darragh E.; O'Connor, James; Crause, Lisa A.; Strumpfer, Francois; Strydom, Ockert J.; Brink, Janus D.; Sass, Craig; Wiid, Eben; Atad-Ettedgui, Eli (2010-07-16). Saving SALT: repairs to the spherical aberration corrector of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). SPIE. doi:10.1117/12.856239.

O’Donoghue, Darragh E.; Crause, Lisa A.; O’Connor, James; Strümpfer, Francois; Strydom, Ockert J.; Sass, Craig; Brink, Janus D.; Plessis, Charl du; Wiid, Eben; Love, Jonathan (2013-02-11). "Resolving the Southern African Large Telescope's image quality problems". Optical Engineering. 52 (8). SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng: 081604. doi:10.1117/1.oe.52.8.081604. ISSN 0091-3286. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

O'Donoghue, Darragh E.; Atad-Ettedgui, Eli; Balona, Luis; Bigelow, Bruce C.; Booth, John A.; Botha, Lucian; Brink, Janus D.; Buckley, David A. H.; Charles, Phil; Christians, Alrin; Clemens, J. Christopher; Crause, Lisa A.; Crawford, Steven M.; Evans, Geoffrey P.; Gajjar, Hitesh; Hashimoto, Yas; Hendricks, Malcolm; Kniazev, Alexei; Koeslag, Anthony R.; Koorts, Willie P.; Kriel, Herman J.; Loaring, Nicola S.; Love, Jonathan; Marang, Fred; Metcalfe, Douglas; Meyer, Brennan; O'Connor, James; du Plessis, Charl A.; Ramsey, Lawrence W.; Romero-Colmenero, Encarni; Sass, Craig; Scholtz, Johann C.; Sefako, Ramotholo; Siyengo, Sandisa; Still, Martin; Strydom, Ockert J.; Swat, Arkadiusz; Du Toit, Johann F.; Vaisanen, Petri; Wells, Martyn; Worters, Hannah (2008-07-14). Atad-Ettedgui, Eli; Lemke, Dietrich (eds.). The image quality of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). SPIE. doi:10.1117/12.788841. {{cite conference}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)