SALT in the news
I have just had chance to read an article on SALT/SAAO from last week's Life section in the Guardian. I visited SAAO in Sutherland last September and got to see SALT for myself. It is a big project and hopefully will benefit the local area like the article says. SALT is based on the Hobbey-Ebberly 10m telescope in Texas but with a redesigned optics system. Lessons learned from these telescopes will no doubt be useful for the proposed Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL - still looking for a nest) which would be 100m in diameter. It is difficult to image an optical telescope that is bigger than the Lovell telescope!