The Southern African Large Telescope is a 10-metre class optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy. It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1-metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 by 9.8 m. 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.
SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. It enables imaging, spectroscopic, and polarimetric analysis of the radiation from astronomical objects out of reach of northern hemisphere telescopes.
It is closely based on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, with some changes in its design, especially to the spherical aberration corrector. The main driver for these changes were desired improvements to the telescope's field of view. It shares the same fixed mirror altitude design, which limits access to 70% of the visible sky.