Images from new telescope to be released Thursday

Images from new telescope to be released Thursday

Madison, Wis. — Astronomers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an international consortium of universities and government agencies on Thursday will release the first astronomical images obtained by the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), a newly constructed telescope now equivalent to the largest optical telescope in the world.
UW-Madison is a leading partner in the consortium that built the telescope on a remote mountain plateau, 220 miles from Cape Town, South Africa.
The images from the telescope, which has an 11-meter segmented mirror array, represent the beginning of scientific operations at the new observatory.