rubinann16045 — Announcement

Rubin Digest 09 December 2016

9 December 2016

Project News

The LSST Camera achieved a major milestone this week: the Science Raft team, located primarily at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), has constructed the very first Science Raft Tower Module populated with a full array of 9 CCDs and 3 Raft Electronics Boards.  Full story with images can be found here. 

A fundamental requirement of the LSST Education and Public Outreach (EPO) program is to develop products that users actually want and need.  Since technology and user tastes change over time, we have been encouraged to refresh the body of work that resulted in the EPO Baseline Design approved at our Final Design Review in December of 2013.  To lay the groundwork for that effort, a workshop took place in Tucson this week to initiate a follow-up needs assessment.  A broad group of participants will work with a consultant firm over the next ten weeks to perform an analysis of our current EPO design plans, including stakeholder interviews, personas, journey maps, and interface reviews. For further information contact EPO Project Manager Ben Emmons, bemmons@lsst.org

As part of preparations for the upcoming Commissioning Plan review next January at SLAC, Systems Scientist Chuck Claver led a productive Data Management (DM)-centered commissioning workshop at the University of Washington this week.  The team worked on defining the observations needed to verify the scientific performance of the DM system and how to manage the transfer from commissioning to operations.  Read More.

The LSST Project Office will be closed for holidays on December 26 & 27, 2016, and January 2 & 3, 2017.  This Weekly Digest will not be distributed on December 23, 30, or January 6, picking up again after the AAS meeting on Friday, January 13th. 

Corporation News

Ten days and counting down to the deadline for the 2017 LSST Corporation Enabling Science Call for Proposals. Proposals are due no later than Monday, December 19, 2016 at midnight PST. Call for Proposal details are available here (login required).

LSST Corporation welcomes five new International Contributors to the LSST Team. New ICs include: Max Plank Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)/Germany, University of Nova Gorica (UNG)/Slovenia, Barcelona-Madrid Consortium (BCN-MAD)/Spain, Stockholm University Physics Department (SU-Physics)/Sweden, and the Graduate Institute of Astronomy of National Central University (NCU)/Taiwan ROC.

The second Data Science Fellowship Program “school” will take place January 23-27, 2017 at Caltech in Pasadena, CA. This continuing program is a two-year training program for graduate students designed to teach skills required for LSST science that are not easily addressed by current astrophysics programs.

Personnel News

Andrés Anania has joined the LSST Telescope and Site software team as a Control System Software Engineer. In this position, based in La Serena, Andrés will contribute to the design and development of TCS software components and will play a key role in the integration of these components in Chile. Andrés has a background in electrical engineering with software design and development experience for embedded systems. Most recently he was an intern at ALMA; Andrés also has experience with the development of a 3-D printer.

LSST is actively recruiting for the twelve open positions listed on our hiring website:  http://www.lsst.org/hiring.  We’ll be at the AAS 229 Career Networking and Job Fair on Wednesday evening, January 4th, to talk with interested parties about these positions and others that will be opening soon. 

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2016

December 12 - 13: Towards Science in Chile with the LSST 2016 *Viña del Mar, Chile

December 13 - 14: AURA Workforce and Diversity Committee (WDC), Tucson, AZ

December 19: LSST Corporation Enabling Science 2017 Call for Proposal Deadline

2017

January 3: ZTF Community Workshop at AAS 229*, Grapevine, TX

January 3: LSST AGN Science Collaboration Roadmap Development Meeting* AAS 229 Meeting; Grapevine, TX

January 3 - 7: AAS 229, Grapevine, TX.  LSST’s Open House is 7:30 – 9:00p, on Tuesday, January 4th. 

January 24 - 26: Commissioning Review, SLAC National Accelerator Lab

February 2 – 3: AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) Meeting, Tucson, AZ

February 13-17: DESC Meeting, Dark Energy School, and Hack Day*, SLAC National Accelerator Lab

March 6-8: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Glendale, CA

March 13 - 15: Blind Analysis in High-Stakes Survey Science: When, Why, and How? * SLAC; Menlo Park, CA

April 3 - 5: LSSTC F2F Board Meeting and Hill Visits, Washington, DC

April  6 & 7: AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) Meeting, Washington, DC

April 3-7: LSST DESC Hack Week *, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

May 22 – 25: Infrastructure for Time Domain Science in the Era of LSST, Tucson, AZ

May 31-June 2: Supernovae Workshop *, Northwestern University, IL

June 12 – 16: Getting Ready for Doing Science with LSST Data, Lyon, France

July 10-14: DESC Meeting, Dark Energy School, and Hack Day*, Brookhaven National Lab

August 14 – 18: LSST 2017 Project & Community Workshop, Tucson, AZ