Research
Research using SALT at the South African Astronomical Observatory has led the facility to important discoveries. By using the Southern African Large Telescope, SAAO has the ability to take "snapshots" of stars in very quick succession. It is optimized for wavelengths and observing modes not available on other very large telescopes. As a result, astronomers can study rapidly changing properties of compact stars, primarily as they pull in gas from their companion stars or surroundings. The significance of this discovery allows us to detect black holes.The gravitational field of a compact star commonly pulls in gas from a companion star, thus radiation (especially X-ray) is emitted. Scientists used this as an indirect way to locate black holes. Another phenomenon that SALT has helped astronomers investigate is the way that masses build up on some compact stars until supernova explosions blow them apart, which gives scientists a "Type 1a" supernovae used to show that the expansion of the universe is speeding up.
Other note-worthy research the South African Astronomical Observatory has achieved using SALT include the discovery of a class of stars known as "polar", or a pair of stars. The "polar" binary star system, where a compactor star called a "white dwarf" whose volume has shrunk about one millionth of a star like our sun. Studies using SALT concluded that these polar binary star systems take only an hour and a half to complete an orbit. Also, the SALT telescope allows scientists to study the rapid brightness changes in exotic stars.
More research using SALT has aided astronomers to investigate the structure and evolution of our galaxy, such as quasars, Magellanic clouds, the galactic structure and stellar astrophysics. SALT released its first color images, which marked the achievement of the "first light". This also marked the debut of the fully operating SALTICAM, which is a $600,000 digital camera designed and built for SALT. 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.
Read more about this topic: Southern African Large Telescope
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