rubinann16005 — Announcement

Rubin Digest 12 February 2016

12 February 2016

Project News

The Operations Planning Review wraps up this afternoon after a productive two days exploring observatory operations and staffing with an experienced, engaged panel.  The panel was charged with evaluating our framework and scope for the LSST operations plan and our (approach to, steady-state) FTE estimates. 

The NSF Status Review, and parallel evaluation of the LSST Earned Value Management System, completed mid-week with a positive debrief presentation from the committee.   Written comments will follow with recommendations for consideration.

Our Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) subcontractor Asturfeito in Spain has begun to produce steel plates for the elevation hydrostatic bearings. 

LSST Director Steve Kahn and Deputy Director Beth Willman are both Keynote Speakers at the Future Sky Surveys and Big Data Workshop, taking place April 25 – 29, 2016 at KASI, Daejoen, Korea. 

Inspection of the installation of rebar in preparation for the pier foundation concrete pour on Cerro Pachón is nearly complete as seen in the latest LSST Facebook post. 

Corporation News

The LSST Transients and Variable Stars (TVS) Science Collaboration is planning a “Road-Mapping get-together” for March 24 & 25, 2016, at Argonne National Laboratory.  This small collaborative workshop will shape the ongoing roadmap contributions into a coherent vision for the LSST TVS path to science.  More information is available online or by contacting organizers Federica Bianco, Ashish Mahabal, and Lucianne Walkowicz.

Personnel Notes

Christopher Contaxis and Harini Sundararaman have joined the LSST Telescope and Site team in Tucson to help with the design and development of software components of the telescope control systems.  Christopher has experience with software architecture, development and testing, most recently with hardware control systems and electronics test applications.  Harini has most recently worked in software development and verification of aircraft cockpit display systems. 

Upcoming 2016 Meetings LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

February 21: LSSTC Part 2 Proposal Letters of Intent due*

February 22-24: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Santa Cruz, CA

March 7-11: LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) meeting, SLAC

March 8-10: 2nd Annual US-Chile Education Summit, Chile

March 21: LSSTC Part 1 and Part 2 Proposals due*

March 24-25: LSST Transients Working Group Workshop*, Argonne National Laboratory

April 5-7: Photometric Redshifts in LSST*, University of Pittsburgh

April 11-13: LSSTC Board Meeting* in Washington, DC

April 25 – 29: Future Sky Surveys and Big Data Workshop, Daejoen, Korea

May 22 – 25: Cross-correlation Spectacular with LSST:  Exploring Synergies Between LSST and External Datasets to Discover Fundamental Physics, BNL

May 24-26: XLDB 2016 Conference and Workshop, SLAC

June  6-10: Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy VI*, Carnegie Mellon University

June 12-16: Meeting of the Stars, Milky Way and Local Volume Science Collaboration* at AAS 228, San Diego, CA

June 20-24: LSST@Europe2*, Belgrade, Serbia

June 28-July: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation, Edinburgh, Scotland

July 18-22: LSST DESC meeting, at Oxford, UK

August 15-19: LSST 2016 Project & Science Workshop, Tucson, AZ