Announcements 2019

17 December 2019: Project & Science News The LSST Project Offices wishes everyone relaxing holidays and a Happy New Year! The LSST 2019 Holiday Card can be viewed at this link, and a news item highlighting some major LSST milestones achieved in 2019 is available here. The 2019 Day in the Life of LSST video is now available; you can view it at this link. Thank you to everyone who participated! LSST is finalizing plans for the open house to be held Monday, January 6th from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Winter meeting. A vast amount of important information is on the agenda, so we encourage you to attend if you’ll be at the meeting. Info and presentations will also be made available after the meeting, so watch for announcements. Additionally LSST will be staffing booth #603G in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Pavilion of the Exhibit Hall on January …

26 November 2019: Project & Science News LSST will host a booth and an open house at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Winter meeting in Honolulu, HI on January 4-9, 2020. The LSST Open House is scheduled for Monday, January 6th from 5:30-7:00 p.m. More details about the LSST booth and the open house will be shared when they are available. The LSST Operations Team recently invited current LSST Corporation Memorandum of Agreement holders to submit Letters of Intent (LOIs) to make in-kind contributions in exchange for LSST data rights. LSST received Letters of Interest (LOI) from prospective international members including 478 principal investigators. About 70 of these are from new institutions without prior agreements with the LSST Corporation. The letters speak to contributions that cover all types of in-kind contributions noted by NSF and DOE in their May 2019 talking points. The letters will be forwarded this week to NSF and DOE …

20 November 2019: In early November, the GEMMA (Gemini in the Era of Multi-Messenger Astronomy) project brought together science communications professionals to explore the unique opportunities and challenges of communicating Multi-Messenger and Time-Domain Astronomy, two rapidly growing fields in astronomy. Funded by the US National Science Foundation, this communications summit hosted more than 30 participants for two days at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, an AURA-managed facility. Until the mid-20th century, our view of the Universe was limited almost entirely to the narrow band of light that could penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere and was visible either to our eyes or to sensitive photographic plates loaded at the focus of increasingly large telescopes. The first major expansion of our view came with the development of radio astronomy, leading to the realization that the Universe could look very different when seen through different “eyes” tuned to a different type of radiation. …

12 November 2019: Project & Science News An update on LSST Data Rights and in-kind contributions is now available; read the details at this link. Additionally, a public draft of the LSST Data Policy has been released on Docushare. Questions and comments about the evolving policy are welcome on community.lsst.org. Social unrest in Chile in October had an impact on LSST construction progress, as nightly curfews and safety concerns required the adjustment of work hours and transportation to and from the summit. LSST Project Manager Victor Krabbendam, who was in Chile on a scheduled visit when civil protests began on October 18th, was able to assist with logistics so that dome work could continue on the summit when possible. Photos from his visit are available in the LSST Gallery. Because the social situation in Chile continues to be unstable, we are still monitoring events closely, communicating frequently with personnel in Chile, and planning …

10 November 2019: In a recent collaborative study, Gemini Observatory and Subaru Telescope uncover the massive (and larger than expected) structure of a distant supercluster. Mapping the formation of these ancient superclusters is a critical step in understanding the dark matter and dark energy that shape these structures. Read an excerpt about this research from Subaru Telescopeʻs science highlight below. A team of astronomers used the Subaru Telescope and Gemini North telescope to reveal that a well-known distant supercluster is part of a larger structure at least twice as extended as what was already known. The galaxies associated with the supercluster are thought to have formed simultaneously over a vast area and then evolved to their observed states. Using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) Gemini North telescope and the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) on Subaru Telescope, the team has revealed that the supercluster CL1604, a distant supercluster located about 7.3 billion …

29 October 2019: Project & Science News Our thoughts are with our Chile-based colleagues during the recent period of social instability. All LSST staff and their families, as well as contractors and visitors, are safe, and we have stayed in frequent contact with them since the unrest in Chile began. A team from EIE Group and Phase Motion Control has arrived on the summit to start up and test the LSST Dome azimuth drives. As of last week, the bogies had undergone final alignment, installation/connection of drives was complete, and the dome was successfully rotating under power with a provisional friction drive system in place of the final rack-and-piñon system. A short video of the dome rotating is available at this link. The carousel and back flange of the LSST filter exchange system, which were recently transported by plane from Paris, France, have safely arrived at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, …

15 October 2019: Project Science News On October 1st, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) launched NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF’s NOIR Lab), which integrates operations of all of NSF’s nighttime astronomical facilities. LSST Operations will be one of the five facilities included in this new organization. The LSST Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) cell assembly has been successfully integrated with the M1M3 mirror surrogate inside the LSST summit facility building. On October 10th, the mirror surrogate was lifted off the cell’s static supports with the system of hard points and pneumatic actuators that will support the weight of the mirror during telescope operations. Many LSST team members in Tucson, La Serena, and Cerro Pachón contributed to this exciting milestone, and photos of the event are available in the LSST Gallery. The filter exchange system for the LSST Camera has left IN2P3 in Paris, …

24 September 2019: Project & Science News The LSST Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) is on the summit! The TMA was successfully transported from the port in Coquimbo to Cerro Pachón during the week following its arrival in Chile on September 7th. The 26 disassembled pieces of the TMA were transported to the summit with a fleet of 9 trucks and 12 trailers. Read more about the move in this recent news item, and view photos in the LSST Gallery. The L1-L2 lens assembly, which consists of two of the three lenses for the LSST Camera, has arrived at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory after being shipped from Arizona Optical Systems (AOS) in Tucson, AZ. The L1L2 contract was managed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the lens assembly was built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, and its subcontractor AOS in Tucson. L1, which is 1.57 meters (5.1 …

11 September 2019: Project & Science News A reminder, Daylight Saving Time began in Chile on September 8th; there is now a 4-hour difference between official LSST Project Time (Pacific Standard Time) and the time in Chile. A Joint Status Review of LSST by its funding agencies, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy (DOE), was held in Tucson, AZ on August 27-30. Following the review, LSST Project Manager Victor Krabbendam acknowledged the hard work done by the Project team in successfully representing accomplishments and demonstrating problem-solving abilities. Subsystems are currently drafting responses to the review committee’s recommendations. A photo from the closeout report presentation is available in the LSST Gallery. The ship carrying the major components of the LSST Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) arrived in Coquimbo, Chile on September 7th. TMA Technical Manager Shawn Callahan and LSST Principal Surveyor Michael Logue, assisted by staff in Chile, oversaw unloading …

5 September 2019: The 347-person team that made the first image of a supermassive black hole has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, one of the “Oscars of Science.” By synchronizing 8 radio telescopes, the team created a virtual telescope the size of the Earth, with a resolving power never before achieved from the Earth’s surface. One of their first targets was the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. NOAO Astronomer Tod Lauer is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team.

27 August 2019: Project & Science News More than 300 participants attended the 2019 LSST Project and Community Workshop, an opportunity for LSST Project and Science Community members to network, share progress, and discuss upcoming challenges. Read more about LSST 2019, held August 12-16 in Tucson, AZ, at this link. A high-resolution version of the team photo taken at the workshop is available in the LSST Gallery. A new video promoting LSST premiered during the welcome plenary at LSST 2019. The video features footage collected from attendees at LSST 2018 as part of an ongoing Education and Public Outreach project called “StoryTime Domain.” The video can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded from the LSST Gallery. The LSST Science Advisory Committee (SAC) has reviewed the Letters of Intent that were submitted for developing community event brokers for LSST. Based on the high quality and varied science goals of these letters, all letter-writers are …

22 August 2019: Every galaxy has a story, and every galaxy has been many others in the past (unlike for humans, this is not purely metaphorical, as galaxies grow via hierarchical assembly). Generally speaking, the most massive galaxies have led the most interesting lives, often within teeming galactic metropolises where they are subject to frequent interactions with assorted neighbors. These interactions influence the structure and motions of the stars, gas, and dark matter that make up the galaxies. They also affect the growth of the supermassive black holes at the galaxies’ centers. Although the detailed life stories of most galaxies will remain forever uncertain, the key thematic elements may be surmised in various ways. A particularly powerful probe of a galaxy’s dynamical structure is called integral field spectroscopy (IFS), which dissects a galaxy’s light at each point within the spectrograph’s field of view. In this way, it is possible to construct a map …

8 August 2019: It all depends on how you look at it—galaxies appear different in visible light (i.e., wavelengths that our eyes are sensitive to) than at longer wavelengths, in the infrared. In visible light (panel a), the Whirlpool galaxy M51 and its companion show fine filigree dust lanes that obscure and redden the light from background stars. In the infrared (panels c and d), the dust lanes, warmed by starlight, glow brightly. Panel b combines the visible light image, taken at the Kitt Peak 2.1m telescope, and the infrared images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

6 August 2019: Project & Science News We invite you to attend a free evening talk, “LSST and Black Holes,” on Thursday, August 15, during the LSST Project and Community Workshop (login required). Featured speakers are LSST Project Manager Victor Krabbendam, University of Arizona astrophysicist Feryal Ozel, and Northwestern University’s Raffaella Margutti. Everyone is welcome and no registration is necessary. More information and speaker bios are available at this link. After additional study, LSST has released an updated statement on the large-scale deployment of low Earth orbit satellite constellations. The updated wording can be found at this link. The LSST Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel) achieved engineering first light on the night of July 23rd, on Cerro Pachón, with all its system components (both hardware and control software) operational, and the telescope pointed at the sky. The AuxTel still has a number of outstanding items to be completed, but this initial on-sky testing indicated that …

5 August 2019: Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io brought astronomers and geologists together to reveal that this moon’s hot spots fluctuate on unexpected timescales. The team utilized the Gemini North telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, both located on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island. The Gemini observations, which provided about 80% of the data for the study, employed the high-resolution adaptive optics system ALTAIR combined with the Gemini Near InfraRed Imager and spectrograph (NIRI). The researchers conducted a total of 271 observations between 2013 and 2018 and published their results in the July 2019 issue of The Astronomical Journal and the June 28, 2019 issue Geophysical Research Letters. While whizzing around Jupiter in an elliptical orbit with a period of only 1.8 days, Io’s interior is warmed by the varying pull of Jupiter’s gravity, roughly similar to how the Earth’s moon causes tides on our planet. This “tidal heating” powers Io’s volcanoes. However, the shape of …

1 August 2019: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Newsweek is highlighting pioneers in science and technology, their moonshots, and how they hope to change the world. This week’s issue features NOAO Astronomer Aaron Meisner, who describes the inspiration behind the Backyard Worlds citizen science project he helped create and how it brings the human element back to the exploration of big data sets.

25 July 2019: By observing a single star orbiting around the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, a team of astronomers have tested Einstein’s one hundred-year-old theory of General Relativity in an unprecedented new regime. Unlike Sir Isaac Newton’s law of gravity, which states that matter pulls on other matter across empty space, General Relativity theory proposes that massive objects like supermassive black holes distort both space and time, which in turn affects the motions of objects around them. The team’s result: “Einstein’s right, at least for now,” said Andrea Ghez at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), a co-lead author of the research. Gemini Observatory played an integral part in this research using the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawai‘i with the Near Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS). Using NIFS the team acquired critical spectroscopic observations of the star, known as S0-2, as it orbited …

22 July 2019: Maunakea Observatories issued an open letter intended to share their perspectives about the situation on Maunakea with the broader astronomy community. Read on Maunakea Observatories website

17 July 2019: Project & Science News Registration for the 2019 LSST Project and Community Workshop is now closed, with 301 people registered for the event. Book your hotel at this link before July 22 in order to receive the LSST 2019 room rate. Save the date: The LSST Project will host a workshop on December 2-4, 2019, in the Princeton, NJ area, on the topic of data processing for LSST. The goal of the workshop is to engage the community in the choice and development of LSST algorithms. It will include presentations from the Project on the current status of LSST algorithms and pipelines, and unconference sessions to encourage open discussion. For additional information and updates, visit the workshop webpage. Viewers enjoyed clear skies above Cerro Pachón during the total solar eclipse on July 2nd; photos taken of the eclipse over the LSST observatory are available in the LSST Gallery. The next …

17 July 2019: On 2 July 2019, a total solar eclipse passed over Chile and Argentina. Through a stroke of astronomical luck, the path of totality crossed directly over the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) located in the foothills of the Andes, 7,241 feet (2200 meters) above sea level in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile. During two minutes of totality, starting at 4:38 p.m. ET, the day turned into night when the moon completely covered the sun.