Rubin Digest 28 June 2022

29 June 2022

Project & Science News

Rubin Observatory recently participated in the American Astronomical Society summer meeting (AAS#240) held June 12-16 in Pasadena, CA. Read more details about the event, which was the first in-person AAS meeting since January 2020, in this news item. Photos are also available in the Gallery.

The final deadline to register for the Rubin 2022 Project and Community Workshop (PCW) is less than a month away (July 22nd) so please make sure to register soon. The workshop will be held August 8-12, at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain in Tucson, AZ.

A number of US-based Rubin staff have recently visited the summit in person for the first time since early 2020. These visits have provided an opportunity for management to appreciate firsthand the significant progress made by the summit team, and to help plan for important upcoming work. Photos are available in the Gallery.

Also of note on the summit, work on the Telescope Mount Assembly (photo) is currently shifting focus. Essential operational commissioning has been completed by the UTE subcontractors, and now a combined Rubin SIT-Com/Telescope & Site/Camera team will take over for the next ~2 months for the final demonstration of the Camera/Secondary Mirror (M2) removal procedures, followed by ComCam installation in early August. 

The camera team successfully installed the camera shutter and filter auto-changer to the camera body, which contains the cryostat with the L3 lens, the filter carousel, and the utility trunk (a photo can be viewed in the Gallery). This effort successfully demonstrated the installation and removal of the shutter using the extraction rail that will be used to service the shutter when the camera is on the telescope. After some functional testing in the next few weeks, the shutter and auto-changer will be removed in preparation for installation of the L1-L2 lens assembly, planned for late July.

Of interest to the science community: Zou et al. (2022, ApJS) have performed far-infrared to X-ray spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting to derive galaxy/AGN properties for 2.8 million objects in three LSST Deep-Drilling Fields: CDF-S, XMM-LSS, and ELAIS-S1. These should be useful for studies of galaxies, AGNs, and transients in these prime LSST fields. The paper is available at this arxiv link, with a large corresponding data release available on zenodo.

Rubin Observatory swag items, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, and more, are available for purchase in our not-for-profit online store. 

Operations Updates:

As previously communicated, everyone who applied to participate in DP0.2 should have received an email invitation from Melissa Graham on May 31st. See this timeline for the transition from DP0.1 to DP0.2 for more information about when the DP0.2 data sets, tutorials, and documentation will become available, and when the live virtual seminars will be held.

LSST Corporation News:

The first LSSTC Catalyst Fellows Funded by the John Templeton Foundation have been selected to work on big data from US astronomy’s flagship Rubin LSST. These early-career scientists will study everything from black holes to galaxy formation, while collaborating to explore how social science can improve collaborations among researchers. The new Catalyst Fellows are: Christopher Carroll (Washington State), Tansu Daylan (Princeton), Azalee Bostroem (University of Arizona), Somayeh Khakpash (Rutgers), Arrykrishna Mootoovaloo (Oxford), and Emily Cunningham (Columbia, fall 2025). The Catalyst Fellowship is a part of LINCC, connects the fellows to the Science Collaborations, and provides fellows with mentoring and leadership training.

Two upcoming LSSTC-supported workshops are open for registration: “Boom! A Workshop on Explosive Transients with LSST” will be held in Champaign-Urbana on July 25-29. The registration deadline for this workshop has been extended to July 9th. “LSST@Europe4” will take place October 24-28 in Rome, Italy. In-person registration is open until capacity (100 attendees) is reached. The deadline for virtual registration is September 15th. 

Announcements & Opportunities:

Carlos Barria joined the Data Management subsystem as DevOps Engineer on June 16th. Carlos will be a member of the summit IT team in Chile, combining software and hardware to build fault-tolerant systems. He will also be responsible for orchestrating, monitoring, and alerting services.

New opportunities for a System Integration Manager (based in Chile) and a Systems Commissioning Manager are open with notices on the Rubin hiring website.

Info for Project Members:

If you’d like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Victor or Zeljko, please fill out this form to indicate your preferred (and backup) date and time. 

There is also an anonymous “suggestion box” for anyone to offer feedback at this link. 

Upcoming Meetings with Rubin Observatory Involvement:

(those with an asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2022

July 17-22	SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation Meeting, Montreal, Canada
July 25-29	Boom! A Workshop on Explosive Transients with LSST*, Urbana-Champaign, IL
July 26-28	Supermassive Black Hole Studies with the Legacy Survey of   Space and Time - 2022: Getting Ready for Rubin Operations*, virtual
August 1-5	DESC Collaboration Meeting*, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago
August 1-12	La Serena School for Data Science: “Applied Tools for Data-driven Sciences"
August 8-12	Rubin Project and Community Workshop 2022, Tucson, AZ
September 14-15	AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR) Meeting, Palo Alto, CA
September 26-30	RR Lyrae and Cepheid stars meeting: “Large-scale Surveys as Bridges between Spectroscopy and Photometry,” Island of La Palma, Spain
October 24-28	LSST@Europe4*, Rome, Italy (hybrid)

Upcoming Deadlines:

2022

July 8	Register for Rubin PCW (to ensure t-shirt)
July 9	Register for Boom! workshop
July 15	Reserve hotel for Rubin PCW
July 22	Register for Rubin PCW (final deadline)
September 15	Register for LSST@Europe4 (virtual participation)