High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 66m2 area optical telescope with a nominally 9.2 meter aperture but up to about 11.1m x ~9.8 m diameter aperture, and designed mainly for spectroscopy. 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.