SUTHERLAND, South Africa, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- Astronomers unveiled a state of the art telescope Thursday that is expected to give them the best ever look into the southern hemisphere skies.
University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Letters and Science introduced the telescope five years after ground was broken on a remote South African mountain near the Kalahari Desert.
The Southern African Large Telescope program was a partnership between UW, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, the Nicolas Copernicus Astronomical Center in Poland and Rutgers University.
The $18 million telescope and observatory is positioned at an advantage to telescopes in the northern hemisphere because of its isolation.
That means less light pollution and a dark sky to search places like the southern Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds.
Organizers of the program hope this will also lead to more South African scientists and astronomers.
Wisconsin professor Eric Wilcots called the lack of black South Africans with Ph.Ds in astronomy a case of an underrepresented majority in science.
