Rubin Digest 26 November 2019

26 November 2019

Project & Science News

LSST will host a booth and an open house at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Winter meeting in Honolulu, HI on January 4-9, 2020. The LSST Open House is scheduled for Monday, January 6th from 5:30-7:00 p.m. More details about the LSST booth and the open house will be shared when they are available.

The LSST Operations Team recently invited current LSST Corporation Memorandum of Agreement holders to submit Letters of Intent (LOIs) to make in-kind contributions in exchange for LSST data rights. LSST received Letters of Interest (LOI) from prospective international members including 478 principal investigators. About 70 of these are from new institutions without prior agreements with the LSST Corporation. The letters speak to contributions that cover all types of in-kind contributions noted by NSF and DOE in their May 2019 talking points. The letters will be forwarded this week to NSF and DOE for review. Once an LOI is approved by NSF and DOE, LSST will begin working with the corresponding group, institution, or national entity to craft a formal proposal that will be negotiated in 2020. 

“Expressions of Interest” are now being accepted for the LSST Algorithms Workshop to be held in Princeton, NJ on March 17-19, 2020, on the topic of image processing and algorithms for LSST. Details about the workshop can be found at this link. Please use this form (login required) to indicate your interest in attending the workshop by December 22, 2019. Confirmations will be sent by the end of the year.

The Data Management bootcamp held November 12-14 in Princeton, NJ, was a success, with many local and remote attendees. Presentations and resources shared at the workshop are available on lsst.community. 

To prepare for Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) work, which is getting underway on the telescope pier, a large tent has been installed to protect the work area from dust and weather. The tent, which fits inside the dome structure, will allow dome work and TMA work to continue in parallel. See a photo of the now-enclosed telescope pier in the LSST Gallery.

The four segments of the azimuth track for the TMA were installed in mid-November, using a large-capacity crane that recently arrived on the summit. Read details about the crane and the azimuth track installation in this recent news post.

The LSST Commissioning Camera (ComCam) is now fully assembled with optics in the lab at LSST headquarters in Tucson. LSST Chief Scientist Tony Tyson traveled to Tucson from UC Davis with Craig Lage for final assembly and initial electro-optical testing of the camera. ComCam is currently scheduled to ship to Chile in late February 2020. Photos of ComCam are available in the LSST Gallery.

LSST in the Media

Following the announcement of another SpaceX communications satellite launch on November 11th, LSST Chief Scientist Tony Tyson participated in several media interviews to discuss the impact of satellite constellations on astronomy, and LSST specifically. Among the resulting media features were an article in Nature.com and an episode of the NPR Science podcast Shortwave.

LSST was featured in a November 7th article in Symmetry Magazine describing the challenges posed by LSST’s enormous data output, and the solutions being developed by the LSST Data Management team. Read the article at this link. 

Information for Project Members

An LSST Project all-hands meeting was held on November 14th. The meeting featured construction progress updates, schedule and budget contingency information, and other relevant news. The meeting recording and slide presentation can be accessed on Docushare.

Personnel News

Jorge Lopez joined the Telescope and Site subsystem in the role of Software Engineer on November 18. Based in Chile, Jorge will be developing, testing, and integrating the control software for the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3). 

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2020

January 4-8: American Astronomical Society (AAS) 235th Meeting, Honolulu, HI

January 6: LSST Open House at AAS Meeting, Honolulu, HI 

January 20-24: Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) Winter Collaboration Meeting, Tucson, AZ

January 22-23: AMCL Meeting, Tucson, AZ

January 24-25: Project Science Team (PST) Meeting, Tucson, AZ

March 17-19: LSST Algorithms Workshop, Princeton, NJ

June 8-12: LSST@Europe4, Rome, Italy

August 10-14: LSST 2020 Project and Community Workshop, Tucson, AZ