IUCAA Brochure 2024

observing time is open to astronomers from IUCAA and Indian Universities. There are two main workhorse instruments in SALT that support the astronomical observations: (i) The Robert Stobie Spectrograph and (ii) the High Resolution Spectrograph. Observations using these are carried out in service mode (i.e astronomers from IUCAA can obtain data without going to the observatory by submitting observing blocks well in advance) with a typical completion rate of about 70%. Over the past couple of years they have completed 4 main surveys using SALT. These are (i) identification of distant radio bright quasars as targets for MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey, (ii) Lyman- α Diffuse emission around a complete sample of distant radio-bright quasars, (iii) Time variability of very fast outflows frombright distant quasars and (iv) Largest sample of host galaxies that are responsible for strong absorption lines seen in the spectra of distant quasars. SALT has also been used to study transient sources like Gamma Ray Bursts, Supernovae and Gravitational Wave sources.