to the Polish site of the telescope SALT
(Southern African Large Telescope).

In 1999, the governments of Poland and South Africa signed an agreement to promote mutual scientific and technological cooperation. A committee was set up in order to identify possible areas of cooperation under this agreement. The decision was made by Poland on co-financing the construction of SALT telescope in South Africa.

We present basic information about the telescope and its instruments and organizations established to manage the project. A software for the data processing is available. There will be also a publicly available observational data made using SALT, in the near future.


South Africa, Poland, Germany, United States, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have completed construction of the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere. Its main mirror consisting of a hexagonal passages has a diameter of 11 meters. Modelled on the American Telescope (HET Hobby-Eberly Telescope) telescope (SALT) is a completely new optical system. SALT is able to observe distant stars, galaxies and quasars billions of times fainter than visible to the naked eye.