Starry, Starry Nights

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "I see the Americans working hard day and night to establish the basic needs for the Iraqi people. I think people [in America] are divided because it's a war. War is always a bad idea." —IRAQI FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR—AND DARTMOUTH GRADUATE STUDENT—BASAKAT JASSEM IN AN AUGUST INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WHEN THE LARGEST OPTICAL Telescope in the Southern Hemisphere goes into operation next year in Sutherland, South Africa, Dartmouth astronomers will have 28 of the darkest nights anywhere on earth to peer 13.5 billion years back toward the beginning of the universe. This is thanks to the Colleges 10 percent interest in the $30 million project.

Five years in the making and only four months behind its original schedule, the Southern Africa Large Telescope (SALT) is a joint venture of the South African government and 11 partners from the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Germany and New Zealand. Besides Dartmouth, American participants include Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Each will get a share of the expected 280 viewing nights a year proportionate to their investment in the project. Dartmouth's 10 percent is one of the largest shares.

Built on the very cost-effective Hob- by-Eberly Telescope (HET) design developed in the 1990s at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, the primary optical surface of SALT is an 11-meter array of 91 highly polished hexagonal mirrors set at a fixed angle of 37 degrees above the horizontal. The huge cost savings of the HET design are achieved by not having to move the giant primary mirror in order to track a star. Instead, the much lighter and smaller recording instruments move robotically up in the dome, tracing the reflected track of the star in the mirror below. Aio-meter fixed-mirror telescope can be built for the cost of a 4-meter conventional one.

But like all savings, it comes at a cost. SALT will be able to view objects in virtually the entire Southern Hemispheres sky, but only as they come into view. Like a time-share condominium, scheduling might become a problem. But it's not one now for the Colleges six-faculty-member astronomy/astrophysics group within the department of physics and astronomy.

"We're a small program," says associate professor Brian Chaboyer, the group's point man on the project, "and we're about to have access to a very bigprogram asset. We look at this as a very good investment that's only going to increase in value, not only to our research programs but financially as well."

Astronomers are supposed to be farsighted, of course, but by buying into a world-class telescope that can resolve a dime at six miles and detect a candle flame on the moon, Chaboyer and his colleagues will soon have the means to look back billions of years.

Piece of Sky A $3 million investmentguarantees Dartmouth astronomers apriceless view from South Africa.