<P> The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10 - metre class optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy . It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1 - metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 m by 9.8 m . It is located close to the town of Sutherland in the semi-desert region of the Karoo, South Africa . It is a facility of the South African Astronomical Observatory, the national optical observatory of South Africa . </P> <P> SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere . It enables imaging, spectroscopic, and polarimetric analysis of the radiation from astronomical objects out of reach of northern hemisphere telescopes . It was originally planned to be a copy of the Hobby - Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory, but while adapting the construction plans, significant changes were introduced to its design, especially to the spherical aberration corrector . The main driver for these changes were desired improvements to the telescope's field of view . </P> <P> First light with the full mirror was declared on 1 September 2005, with 1 arc second resolution images of globular cluster 47 Tucanae, open cluster NGC 6152, spiral galaxy NGC 6744, and the Lagoon Nebula being obtained . The official opening by President Thabo Mbeki took place during the inauguration ceremony on 10 November 2005 . </P> <P> South Africa contributed about a third of the total of US $36 million that will finance SALT for its first 10 years (US $20 million for the construction of the telescope, US $6 million for instruments, US $10 million for operations). The rest was contributed by the other partners - Germany, Poland, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand . </P>

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