Rubin Digest 04 December 2018

4 December 2018

Project & Science News

An attractive and functional LSST 2019 wall calendar is now available; pick one up at the LSST booth at the AAS Meeting in Seattle, January 7-10, or print your own copy by downloading the image from the LSST Gallery.

We would like to extend our appreciation for the hard work put in by the LSST community in response to the Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization. We received 46 white papers that will help us explore variations on the survey strategy over the next two years. The LSST Science Advisory Committee are now starting their review, leading to recommendations on how to go forth when simulating these survey strategy options. 

The December 17th deadline is approaching for the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC), and over 800 participating teams have registered so far. Learn more about the challenge in this video, recorded at the 2018 LSST Project and Community Workshop. Information and updates about the challenge can be found on the Kaggle platform hosting site at this link.

The L1 lens for the LSST Camera has been fully coated at REOSC in France, and will soon be shipped back to Arizona Optical Systems (AOS) in Tucson.

The vessel transporting the LSST Secondary Mirror (M2) to Chile, the BBC Challenger, successfully passed through the Panama Canal on November 27th. It is currently scheduled to arrive in Chile around December 6th.

On Cerro Pachón, LSST Dome vendor EIE has successfully completed the main arch girder installation on the summit facility dome. Photos are available in the LSST Gallery.

LSST in the Media

The LSST Camera, currently being assembled at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, was featured in this recent Gizmodo article.

LSST Data Management team members Frossie Economou and Dr. Yusra AlSayyad were interviewed on November 27th on the YouTube channel Deep Astronomy. The program, “All About LSST Science and Engineering,” can be viewed at this link.

Dr. Amanda Bauer, Head of EPO for LSST, was recently interviewed for the Cardiff University podcast Pythagorean Astronomy. The episode, in which she discusses the impact of LSST, can be accessed here.

Corporation News

Members of the LSST Science Community: December 17th is the deadline to submit abstracts for LSST@Asia: Exploring the Wide, Fast, Deep Universe, which will take place in Sydney, Australia, May 20-23, 2019. LSST@Asia will bring together scientists in Asia, Australia and South Africa with an interest in LSST. The meeting will provide an opportunity to interact with each other and with leaders of the LSST Science Collaborations, and to hear updates on LSST construction and data processing progress.

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 22-23: Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) Meeting, Princeton, NJ

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