rubinann18003 — Announcement

Rubin Digest 14 February 2018

14 February 2018

Project & Science News

A meeting of AURA’s Management Council for LSST (AMCL) took place in Tucson on January 29-30. The AMCL, which meets three times a year, is AURA’s oversight and advocacy committee for LSST. AURA President Matt Mountain was present along with LSST Senior Management for a productive agenda of presentations and discussions. The AMCL will meet again April 19-20 in Washington, DC.  

The LSST Overview paper will be issued soon; to prepare for this, the Project Office has initiated verification of the “Builders List” in order to correctly credit and recognize the efforts of LSST team members.

LSST’s Auxiliary Telescope, which has been under refurbishment at the LSST Project Office in Tucson, will soon undergo functional testing of its mechanical and electrical systems. Read more about the Auxiliary Telescope and its role in the LSST survey in this recent news post.

The Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) winter meeting was held at at SLAC on February 5-9. More than 170 participants attended the event, which included an opportunity to visit the LSST Camera clean room. The meeting kicked off with the 7th edition of Dark Energy School, a one-day interactive session designed to prepare new and existing DESC members for science with LSST.

The LSST Solar System Science Collaboration has assembled a science roadmap listing science priorities with LSST; the document is now available here.

Jim Bosch gave the latest in a series of Project Science Team talks for the Science Collaboration Chairs on January 30. His presentation, an overview of LSST Data Pipelines, was the first of six Data Management (DM) talks planned over the next few months. Slides from this presentation can be found on the LSST Scientists web page.

We are very sorry to announce the passing of Walt Innes on Monday, February 5. Walt was a crucial member of the LSST Camera team at SLAC, contributing invaluably to a number of aspects of the system. Walt had a long career at SLAC as an instrumental physicist; prior to joining the LSST project, he played a key role on BaBar and other particle physics projects. Walt will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.

Personnel News

Claudia Araya Salvo joined the Education & Public Outreach subsystem as EPO Chile Coordinator on February 5. Based in Santiago with regular travel to La Serena and Tucson, AZ, Claudia will be responsible for developing educational and other web-based materials in Spanish that are uniquely suited to the needs of Chilean educators, informal science education facilities, and the general public.

Michael Rodriquez joined the Systems Engineering subsystem on February 12. In his role as Senior Systems Engineer, Michael will be responsible for development and oversight of verification plans and test cases for system-level requirements and Interface Control Documents (ICDs) as well as assisting in acceptance of critical subsystems and other tasks as assigned.

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2018

February 28-March 2: LSST Telescope & Site Subsystem Meeting, Tucson, AZ

March 5-9: LSST Systems Engineering/Data Management Joint Subsystem Meeting, Pasadena, CA

April 11-13: LSST Education & Public Outreach Subsystem Meeting, Tucson, AZ

April 16-18: LSSTC Congressional visits, Washington DC

April 18-20: Statistical Challenges for Large-scale Structure in the Era of LSST, Oxford, UK*

April 19-20: AMCL Meeting, Washington DC

June 10-15: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Meeting, Austin, TX

June 11-15: LSST@Europe3, Lyon, France*

June 19-21: Data Visualization and Exploration in the LSST Era, University of IL/NCSA, Champaign, IL*

August 13-17: LSST Project and Community Workshop 2018, Tucson, AZ