20–27 Mar 2026
Wild View Resorts
Africa/Gaborone timezone

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT): Observing Opportunities and a Science Case

23 Mar 2026, 14:30
30m
Wild View Resorts

Wild View Resorts

Plot 80 President Avenue, Kasane, Botswana
Invited Talk Invited Talk Plenary

Speaker

Brian Chaboyer (Dartmouth College and SALT)

Description

SALT is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere and has been in routine operations for 15 years. It is an international collaboration with eight shareholder partners based in four continents. The partnership has evolved over the years, and I will highlight current opportunities for African astronomers to become operations partners in SALT. SALT is a fully queue observed, general purpose telescope which is ideally suited for time domain or survey observations. An example of this is my program to get high resolution spectra, and determine abundances of RR Lyrae stars. This survey of variable stars has led to a rich array of studies on the calibration of RR Lyrae stars as distance indicators and the structure of our Milky Way galaxy and its nearby satellite galaxies.

Stream Science or Engineering

Primary author

Brian Chaboyer (Dartmouth College and SALT)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.