@inproceedings{6588e950f3c642fb81ee4faf9f4fad09,
title = "Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) Instrumentation Update",
abstract = "The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-m class fixed-elevation telescope with a primary mirror composed of 91 spherically figured one metre segments.A prime focus tracker assembly carries the spherical aberration corrector (SAC) and two of SALT's instruments, SALTICAM (the acquisition and imaging camera) and the multi-purpose Robert Stobie spectrograph (RSS).Included in the tracker payload is a fibre-instrument feed, that positions ~45m long fibre cables coupled to the spectrographs in thermal enclosures beneath the telescope.These are the High-Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) and NIRWALS (Near InfraRed Washburn Astronomical Laboratories Spectrograph).The other major undertaking is a custom-built laser frequency comb and precision radial velocity data pipeline for the HRS, due in 2025.A novel RSS slit-mask IFU was recently commissioned, adding optical IFU spectroscopy to SALT's capabilities.Work is also underway to develop a new red channel to turn the RSS into a dual-beam spectrograph.A study done in 2021 investigated the feasibility of building deployable robotic arms equipped with mini SACs to take advantage of SALT's huge uncorrected field of view.Lastly, a pre-study is now underway to explore options for replacing the SAC and prime focus payload on the tracker to improve telescope performance and make provision for future instrument development.",
keywords = "data pipelines, instrumentation, integral field unit (IFU), laser frequency comb (LFC), mini-tracker, payload upgrade, Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), spectrographs",
author = "Crause, {Lisa A.} and Wolf, {Marsha J.} and Bershady, {Matthew A.} and Smith, {Michael P.} and Joshua Oppor and Moses Mogotsi and McCracken, {Richard A.} and Cheng, {Yuk Shan} and Holdsworth, {Daniel L.} and {van der Westhuizen}, {Willem J.} and Simon, {Etienne L.} and Scarrott, {Malcolm C.} and Reid, {Derryck T.} and Sabyasachi Chattopadhyay and Craig Sass and Kurt Jaehnig and Jeff Percival and Ralf Kotulla and Anthony Koeslag and Kotze, {Enrico J.} and Janus Brink and Lategan, {Deon R.} and Buckley, {David A. H.} and Lee Townsend and Menzies, {John W.} and Kathryn Rosie and Rosalind Skelton and Dani{\`e}l Groenewald and Eben Wiid and {van der Merwe}, Nico and Melanie Saayman and Alexei Kniazev and Rudi Kuhn and Tasheen Naicker and Roufurd Julie and Colmenero, {Encarni Romero} and Paul Rabe",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024 SPIE.; SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024 ; Conference date: 16-06-2024 Through 21-06-2024",
year = "2024",
month = jul,
day = "18",
doi = "10.1117/12.3018784",
language = "English",
isbn = "9781510675155",
series = "Proceedings of SPIE",
publisher = "SPIE",
editor = "Bryant, {Julia J.} and Kentaro Motohara and Vernet, {Joel R.}",
booktitle = "Ground-Based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy X",
address = "United States",
}