Image 2 of 42: Full Resolution

We walked over to the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) to see what was going on. I had some Pluto observations with it earlier in the year but nothing running now. We found Keith, an electro-mechanical engineer, who showed us around.

That's the 11-meter SALT primary mirror at the center. It is made of 91 1-meter hexagons. SALT is a bit funny in that it can't point up/down -- it only spins around on its base. This makes scheduling harder, but it still keeps busy. It also means that what would have been a a $100M telescope could be built for $20M instead.

NB: Mosaic from ten wide-angle shots... SALT's trusses are not really curved like this!