{"id":1316,"date":"2013-07-05T10:45:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T14:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/?page_id=1316"},"modified":"2013-07-05T10:48:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T14:48:13","slug":"sutherland","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/travels\/south-africa\/sutherland\/","title":{"rendered":"Sutherland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"VertlatenkloofPass_Afrika\"<\/a>Sutherland, Northern Cape Province, South Africa.\u00a0 Surprisingly, there are three roads that lead to it.\u00a0 One 160 km dirt road from Calvinia, the R354 which is the worst South African road on which we have ever, ever driven; the same dirt road that leads from Sutherland to Fraserburg for another 108 km of sheer torture; and one asphalt paved road, the R354, where you just might run into, literally and figuratively,\u00a0 part of a flatbed tandem lorrie that was unable to ascend the last incline to the top of the last hill before the more-or-less plain.\u00a0 Sutherland, the coldest temperatures in the winter and the hottest temperatures in the summer.\u00a0 Why here? SALT, is the reason.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"SALT_Sutherland\"<\/a>SALT is the Southern African Large Telescope, located about 15 km off the only part of the paved R354 heading towards Fraserburg, in the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).\u00a0 Here you’ll find a high-powered research astronomical center with an array of telescopes constructed by a consortium of international partners including the United States, Germany, Poland, India, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.\u00a0The main telescope, constructed between 2006\u00a0to 2009, is considered to be Africa’s Giant Eye on the Universe.\u00a0 It is housed in the building shown on the left, and can be “booked” for professional use either on site or remotely.\u00a0 The SALT for scientists website<\/a> provides details for international users.<\/p>\n

\"SALT_Telescope\"<\/a>Although similar to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope located at the McDonald Observatory, University of\u00a0 Texas, SALT has a redesigned optical system for its 11 m (33.33 ft) diameter hexagonal mirror array.\u00a0 This redesign results in a larger field of view and effective collecting area, making the SALT telescope is unique.\u00a0 You can see each part of the hexagonal mirror in the image on the right.\u00a0 The primary mirror is spherical in shape, and has an effective aperture of 11.1 m x 9.8 m.\u00a0 Positioned above the mirror is a tracker that\u00a0 moves across it on a virtual spherical focus surface, allowing sky-objects to be “followed” as the earth rotates, without adjusting the azimuth angle for a period of up to two hours.\u00a0 Impressive.<\/p>\n

\"Do_Not_Feed_Astronomers\"<\/a>A staff of astrophysicists, astronomers, and technicians live onsite, with accommodations for visiting scientists from around the world.\u00a0 Instruments are controlled from below and include the SALTICAM, which is a highly fast and sensitive\u00a0CCD imaging camera.\u00a0 This instrument can be operated in a “video” mode, allowing high time resolution (down to ~0.1s) photometry, and also serves\u00a0 as the telscope’s acquisition camera.\u00a0 The telescope also is optimized as an imaging spectrometer (RSS), operating\u00a0 in the UV-Visible region (310 – 900 nm) of the electromagnetic spectrum.<\/p>\n

\"Sutherland_Sunset\"<\/a>The facility provides the public with a few views of space made with these instruments.\u00a0 One is the “Picture of the Month<\/a>” which, unfortunately, was last updated in 2011! Another feature for the public is the image gallery<\/a>; this page was last updated in 2009.\u00a0 And, SAAO offers “first light<\/a>” images, last updated in 2005.\u00a0 But, I guess that when you’re looking at objects that are light years away and observing processes that occurred millions of years ago, what are regular updates anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sutherland, Northern Cape Province, South Africa.\u00a0 Surprisingly, there are three roads that lead to it.\u00a0 One 160 km dirt road from Calvinia, the R354 which is the worst South African road on which we have ever, ever driven; the same … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":1505,"parent":915,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1517,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1316\/revisions\/1517"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ragastal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}