Engineering a Giant Eye
The most expensive part of a giant telescope is the mount; the support that enables astronomers to turn the telescope, point it precisely and lock onto a target. By clever engineering and limiting the telescope to 70% of the sky, SALT was built for one tenth of the cost of a conventional giant telescope.
This resource enables you to learn about the daily and yearly motions of the Earth through finding out about how SALT’s design allows it to observe objects.
Engineering PowerPoint show (3Mb)
A planisphere to make showing the South African Sky (500kB PDF)
Assembly instructions for planisphere (30kB Word doc)