"First Light" for the Southern African Large Telescope

Rutgers and its international partner institutions have released the first full-color astronomical images made by the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). Capable of detecting objects as faint as a candle flame on the moon, the SALT images represents the telescope’s “first light,” a milestone marking the debut of scientific observations on the southern hemisphere ’s largest telescope.

The images provide views of newly born stars amid brilliantly glowing gas clouds, clusters of stars more than twice the age of our own sun, and another galaxy similar to our own Milky Way.

SALT joins six other smaller telescopes on a South African mountaintop near the edge of the Kalahari desert. It is now the equal of the world’s largest optical telescope and a prized window to the night skies of the southern hemisphere.

The telescope was built over five years beginning in 2000 at a cost of approximately $20 million. Rutgers holds a 10 percent partnership in SALT, having contributed $2.4 million toward construction. The university has committed an additional $1 million for operations during the first 10 years.

In 1999, Rutgers became the first institutional partner to join the National Research Foundation of South Africa in the SALT project.

Rutgers and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, another SALT partner, deployed an advanced instrument package on the telescope that gives astronomers new insights into the building blocks of the universe – from dust clouds to star clusters to distant galaxies.

The instrument, known as the Prime Focus Imaging Spectrograph, breaks down light into colors, or wavelengths, to examine such properties as the temperatures and chemical compositions of stars as well as how fast they are moving.

The spectrograph also captures and analyzes polarized light, which can reveal the nature of cosmic dust and magnetic fields around black holes, quasars and galactic nuclei.

SALT is one of several activities that Rutgers has undertaken in South Africa. Others include programs in journalism, education and business. The university launched a science journalism education program in 2004, featuring a workshop for journalists, scientists, educators and public officials. The program formed the basis for the first science journalism association in that country.