rubinann17011 — Announcement

Rubin Digest 28 April 2017

28 April 2017

Dear Reader, we anticipate settling into a bi-weekly distribution for the LSST Digest once we have a full-time Communications Manager.  Thank you for your continued interest.

Project News

The LSST Project Office is currently supporting an on-site incurred cost audit from the NSF.  This is the first time LSST and AURA have taken part in this type of audit.  Going forward, we expect it will become routine.  The audit will investigate LSST’s compliance with the financial requirements of our Cooperative Agreement as well as Office of Management and Budget’s Uniform Guidance.

A multimedia team visited Cerro Pachón in early April to gather high-quality images and video footage of LSST's construction progress. LSST staff assisted the team in obtaining material safely and without disrupting construction progress. Images and more information found here.

LSST's EPO staff has signed a contract to purchase Webdam, a system for Digital Asset Management. Webdam will provide a tool for organizing and storing LSST's photos and video footage, in a secure, centralized location. The system will increase efficiency for preserving digital assets to help prevent them from being lost over time.

Chairs of the LSST Science Collaborations joined the Project Science Team for their monthly joint telecon to discuss DM plans for crowded field processing. A presentation by Jim Bosch, Data Release Production Scientist from Princeton University, is available here.

Construction on the Base Facility on the La Serena Recinto is moving forward with contractor Rencoret. They have finished installation of their construction office facilities and have begun site preparation to support the initial work (renovation of the existing building).  Those interested can follow progress at the Base Facility Construction website  for plans, the on-site webcam, and frequent updates on activities impacting those accessing the Recinto.  

Dome vendor EIE has begun mobilization on the Cerro Pachón summit, with containers arriving by truck, staging areas being cleared, and the establishment of new office space to support assembly tasks.  Initial work will focus on alignment of the plates atop the lower enclosure to prepare for attachment of the azimuth ring and bogie wheels.  

“Raising the roof” has officially begun, with the first piece of white steel roof paneling going up on the LSST facilities building.  Check our Facebook page for updates.

Fabrication and integration of the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) continues in Spain.   The large steel structural components that make up the azimuth assembly are painted and undergoing installation on the Spanish pier.  Read more.

The LSST secondary mirror (M2) system has completed another big milestone, with successful demonstration of closed-loop mirror control. The Harris team accomplished this using the completed deliverable support hardware, LSST developed local control electronics and an aluminum surrogate mirror.  Meanwhile, the mirror substrate is being prepared for its “first light optical test” in July at Harris in Rochester, NY, with the successful bonding of all actuator pads (see photo).

Corporation News

The third session of the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program (DSFP) is underway this week in Tucson, AZ.  This is the third meeting of the first cohort of fellows. The DSFP fellows are joined by four local University of Arizona auditing students who are spending the week studying databases and scalable programming. 

Personnel News

New software positions in the Telescope & Site group have been added to the LSST Hiring Page, joining an existing listing for a Telescope Optical Engineer and many other excellent career opportunities.  Please spread the word, and help us recruit the best and brightest to LSST! 

Rodrigo Rojas joined the Telescope & Site subsystem as Polyfunctional Operator, based in La Serena.  In this position, Rodrigo operates boom truck, fork cranes, man-lifting equipment and other types of heavy machinery, and drives high tonnage vehicles as well as smaller passenger and cargo vehicles according to requirements. Rodrigo will work as a rigger and mechanic, and will support other types of work assembly and general equipment maintenance.

Juan Fabregas was recently hired as the Electrical ITO (“Inspector Técnico de Obra”, Site Technical Inspector) in our Chile office.  He will be working fulltime for LSST on general electrical inspection tasks to support the main building fabrication effort.

At NCSA, Jacob Rundall joined the LSST Data Management subsystem as IT Systems Engineer.  Jacob will be helping to construct and operate compute systems supporting development and production services at NCSA.

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2017

April 24-28: Data Science Fellowship Program – Session 3 * Tucson, AZ

May 1 – 3: NSF Large Facilities Workshop, Baton Rouge and Livingston, LA

May 1 – 5: AURA Board and Member Representatives Annual Meeting, Tucson, AZ

May 12 - 13: LSST Detection of Optical Counterparts of Gravitational Waves*, BNL.  Contact Morgan May for additional information.

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

May 31 - June 2: Supernovae:  The LSST Revolution Workshop *, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

June 12 – 16: Getting Ready for Doing Science with LSST Data,* IN2P3, Lyon, France

June 19 – 21: AURA Workforce and Diversity Committee (WDC), Maui, HI

July 10 - 14: DESC Meeting, Dark Energy School, and Hack Day*, jointly hosted by Stony Brook University & BNL

July 25 – 27: NSF/DOE Joint Status Review of Data Management, NCSA, IL

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

September 6 – 8: NSF/DOE Joint Status Review, Tucson, AZ

September 14 – 15: AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) Meeting, Tucson, AZ

October 26 – 28: Society of Women Engineers WE17 Conference, Austin, TX,

 

Get your LSST gear at our storefront: https://business.landsend.com/store/lsst/