Rubin Digest 20 November 2018

20 November 2018

Project & Science News

The LSST Project Office wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving holiday!

The LSST Coating Chamber arrived on the summit of Cerro Pachón on November 11, safely completing a 15-week journey from Deggendorf, Germany, where it was constructed. The 128-ton Coating Chamber has now been integrated into the summit facility. Photos of the Coating Chamber during shipping, and upon arrival at the summit, are available in the LSST Gallery.

The LSST Secondary Mirror (M2) System cargo was loaded aboard the BBC Challenger on November 12th at the port of Albany, NY. The ship departed for Chile the following day, heading back down the Hudson River. The vessel will travel nearly directly to the port of Coquimbo, Chile, and is due to arrive at the beginning of December. Preparations are underway to accommodate the mirror and associated cargo boxes on Cerro Pachón. Photos of M2 being loaded are available in the LSST Gallery.

The LSST Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) welcomes two new members: Meg Schwamb of Gemini Observatory, an expert on solar system astrophysics; and Stephen Smartt of Queen’s University Belfast, who studies supernovae. In addition, two long-term members of the SAC, Jason Kalirai and Renu Malhotra, are stepping down; we thank them for all their wonderful insights and hard work over the years!

The LSST Network Engineering Team (NET) conducted a successful network demonstration at the Supercomputing 2018 conference, held in Dallas, TX, November 12-15th.  Digital data was transferred via fiber optic networks from the Base Site in La Serena, Chile, to the LSST Data Facility at NCSA in Champaign, IL. A sustained data transfer rate of 80 Gigabits/second (Gbps) was achieved, with short periods at a peak rate of 100 Gbps. A real-time, web display of network performance was monitored live from the NCSA booth at the conference. Read more details at this link.

The Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems (ADASS) 2018 conference, which took place in College Park, MD, was attended by eight LSST project members, as well as representatives from IN2P3, France. Jim Bosch, LSST Data Management Data Release Processing Scientist, gave an invited talk about image processing pipelines. The LSST Communications Office also hosted a booth at the conference, providing information on construction progress and big data aspects of LSST.

Personnel News

Paulina Alcayaga joined the LSST Project Office as a bilingual administrative assistant on November 12. Paulina will be a member of the administrative team in Chile, providing administrative support for the Chilean office and staff.

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2018

December 17-21: South American Workshop on Cosmology in the LSST Era, Sao Paulo, Brazil

2019

January 6-10: AAS 233rd Meeting, Seattle, WA

January 16-17: AMCL Meeting, Tucson, AZ

January 22-24: Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) Meeting, Princeton, NJ

May 20-23: LSST@Asia, Sydney, Australia*