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The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-metre class optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy. It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1 metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 m by 9.8 m. It is located close to the town of Sutherland in the semi-desert region of the Karoo, South Africa. It is a facility of the South African Astronomical Observatory, the national optical observatory of South Africa. SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Deep Space Observatories: The Southern African Large Telescope )〕 It enables imaging, spectroscopic, and polarimetric analysis of the radiation from astronomical objects out of reach of northern hemisphere telescopes. It was originally planned to be a copy of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory, but while adapting the construction plans, significant changes were introduced to its design, especially to the spherical aberration corrector.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Southern African Large Telescope )〕 The main driver for these changes were desired improvements to the telescope's field of view. First light with the full mirror was declared on 1 September 2005, with 1 arc second resolution images of globular cluster 47 Tucanae, open cluster NGC 6152, spiral galaxy NGC 6744, and the Lagoon Nebula being obtained. The official opening by President Thabo Mbeki took place during the inauguration ceremony on 10 November 2005. South Africa contributed about a third of the total of US$36 million that will finance SALT for its first 10 years (US$20 million for the construction of the telescope, US$6 million for instruments, US$10 million for operations). The rest was contributed by the other partners - Germany, Poland, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. ==General information== SALT is located on a hilltop in a nature reserve north-east of Cape Town, near the small town of Sutherland. In March 2004, installation of the massive mirror began. The last of the 91 smaller mirrored hexagon segments was put in place in May 2005. Korea and Japan have telescopes at the site and South Africa has at least five optical telescopes there. The University of Birmingham has a solar telescope to help monitor the Sun. SALT will probe quasars and enable scientists to view stars and galaxies a billion times too faint to be seen by the naked eye. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Southern African Large Telescope」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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