Rubin Digest 28 May 2024

29 May 2024

Project and Science News

The LSST Camera arrived at the Rubin summit facility May 16th after shipping from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The camera traveled by air-ride equipped transport vehicle from SLAC to San Francisco International Airport, where it was loaded on a 747 cargo plane for the flight to Santiago, Chile. Another transport vehicle drove the camera to the base of Cerro Pachón after the plane landed early the morning of May 15th, with the final careful drive up to the summit taking place the next day. Details, images, and video are available in this press release. Congratulations to the LSST Camera team and the many other individuals who contributed to this outstanding achievement!

The block agenda for the Rubin Community Workshop to be held at SLAC on July 22-26 is now available on the meeting website. Register soon and secure your spot with payment before the cap on in-person attendance (250) is reached. 

A meeting of the AURA Management Council for Rubin (AMCR) took place in Tucson, AZ, May 7-8. The Council heard presentations on recent progress and achievements from the Rubin team, including commissioning activities and the developing plans for First Light celebrations, and issued recommendations for continued success.

The 2024 Day in the Life of Rubin Observatory (DITL) video, which features photos from individuals across the Rubin Project submitted in late February, is now available to watch on YouTube. 

Members of the Rubin team at Harvard traveled to the summit to conduct an engineering run with the Rubin Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel) on May 13-15. With support from the summit construction and safety crews, they installed the Multi-beam Optical Steering Sensor (MOSS), a device that measures image degradation due to dome seeing. MOSS projects four almost-parallel beams onto the AuxTel focal plane, and by measuring the differential motion of the beams the team can directly measure dome seeing. Tests of the MOSS were successful in demonstrating its capabilities — more than 10000 images were captured during the run. The team plans to use MOSS in future AuxTel observing runs, and to install an upgraded version on the Simonyi Survey Telescope. Having a direct measure of dome seeing will make it easier to find strategies for mitigating it, providing Rubin and the LSST with the best image quality possible.

LSST-DA News

The call for proposals for the fifth cohort of the LINCC Frameworks Incubator program is now open. The application form can be found here. The LINCC Frameworks team is working to provide robust open-source software tools to support analysis of LSST data at scale. The fifth cohort of the Incubator program, which starts around September 2024 (the deadline for short, stage-one proposals is June 17th, 2024) will provide dedicated funding and collaborations with software engineers to proposal teams who pitch compelling projects to be carried out in collaboration with the LINCC Frameworks team.

Personnel Announcements & Opportunities:

Stelios Voutsinas joined Rubin Data Management’s SQuaRE (Service Quality and Reliability Engineering) team as Senior DevOps Engineer on May 13th. Based in Tucson, Stelios will be focused on the Rubin Science Platform and other SQuaRE services.

Baden Erb joined the Data Management team in Chile on May 20th as DevOps Support Engineer. Baden will provide devops support during night observations and commissioning activities on the summit.

Andrea Marcano joined the Rubin Operations team on May 20th as Senior Executive Coordinator based in Tucson. She will be responsible for administrative tasks to support all departments and the Directors Office.

Carolina Sborja also joined the Rubin Operations team on May 20th, as Program Operations Manager based in Tucson. Carolina will manage activities within the Rubin Operations Director’s Office, taking responsibility for tasks such as developing and documenting procedures, creating reports, and managing events.

Visit the Rubin hiring page to see all open positions with Rubin. 

Info for Project Members:

Congratulations to Angelo Fausti and Hernan Stockebrand for winning last quarter’s Rubin staff awards! See why they were chosen and nominate someone deserving for a future award on the Staff Awards page on the Project website (login required).

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

The link to Rubin’s anonymous “suggestion box” will be changing soon, until a new link is announced please contact our Workplace Culture Advocates (login required) with your suggestions. 

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

Upcoming Meetings with Rubin Observatory Involvement (those with an asterisk* are supported by LSST Discovery Alliance): 

2024

June 10-14	LSST@LATAM, La Serena, Chile
June 16-21	SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation Meeting, Yokohama, Japan
June 17-18 or June 20-21	DP0 Rubin Data Academy, virtual
July 8-12	DESC Collaboration Meeting, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
July 22-25	Catching Supermassive Black Holes with Rubin-LSST, Turin, Italy
July 22-26	Rubin Community Workshop (formerly PCW), SLAC Menlo Park, CA
September 16-20	LSST@Europe6, La Palma, Spain*
November 6-8	AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR) Meeting, La Serena, Chile
November 10-14	Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems (ADASS), Malta

Upcoming Deadlines:

2024

June 14	Registration deadline for DP0 Rubin Data Academy
June 21	Registration deadline for the Rubin Community Workshop 2024 (if the 250 limit is not reached earlier)