News
Scientific heart of giant telescope comes together In the spring of 2005, when the new Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) trains its huge eye on the southern sky for the first time, the starlight it gathers will be parsed and analyzed by an instrument more befitting a space-based telescope than a ground-based monster.The instrument, known as the Prime Focus Imaging Spectrograph, will sit 10 stories above the 11-by-10-meter primary mirror of what will be the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. Its station high above the light-gathering mirror, instead of in the bowels of the SALT Observatory, calls for the same compact, lightweight specs of an instrument destined for Hubble or other space-borne telescope.
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