Speaker Name:
David Buckley
Speaker Affiliation:
SALT/SAAO
Talk Subject:
What's up with SALT?
Date:
03/12/2008 - 13:00
Venue:
Postgraduate Seminar Room, Otto Beit Building
The Southern African Large Telescope was inaugurated in Nov 2005 and later this year will see the completion of the commissioning and performance verification phases, begun in 2006. Two major technical problems have impacted these schedules, which will be discussed.
Two of the First Generation instruments, the imaging camera, SALTICAM, and the multi-mode Robert Stobie Spectrograph (RSS), have been used for initial science and the experience to date will be discussed, illustrated by some scientific results. I will also discuss the status and potential of the third and final First Generation instrument, a fibre-fed high resolution spectrograph, SALTHRS, currently under construction and due for completion in late 2009.