Planetary Science with SALT, the Southern African Large Telescope

Details Planetary Science with SALT, the Southern African Large Telescope Planetary Science with SALT, the Southern African Large Telescope

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.3211g&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #32.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.453

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Southern Africa Large Telescope (SALT) is currently the largest, single, optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere. It boasts a hexagonal, 91-mirror array spanning 11 m × 9.8 m. SALT is located in Sutherland, South Africa; however, the project has an international consortium of partners*. Science operations have been running since 2005, with queue observations taken by the SALT astronomers. Our presentation here is an effort to encourage collaboration with the SALT partner institutions in planetary science research.
SALT is modeled on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, Texas. It is pointed at a fixed-altitude of 37º, a configuration that allows observation of objects at declinations approximately -75º to +10º (including the Small Magellanic Cloud) for viewing windows of up to roughly two hours. First generation instruments include (i) an 8 arcmin × 8 arcmin prime focus imager, subframes of which can be read out at subsecond cadences, and (ii) a prime focus imaging spectrograph capable of high-throughput, medium-resolution spectroscopy down to 320 nm, Fabry-Perot imaging spectroscopy, narrow-band imaging, imaging polarimetry, and spectropolarimetry. Additional details can be found online at http://www.salt.ac.za/.
We present the current capabilities of the telescope and instruments in addition to expectations for the future. We focus on the applicability of SALT for planetary science projects: specific discussions include observations of asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, and targets of opportunity.
*Partner institutions are located in Germany, India, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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