Rubin Observatory Digest for 04 March 2025

5 March 2025

Project & Science News

On the summit, the Camera team removed the lens cover of the LSST Camera, cleaned the primary lens (L1), and replaced the cover on February 19th. This video shows technician Claudio Araya spraying the camera lens with CO2 "snow," which pushes the dust off and then evaporates without leaving any residue. The same equipment and technique is also used to clean the mirrors for the Simonyi Survey Telescope and the Rubin Auxiliary Telescope. See a video of the camera lens cleaning on YouTube.

As reported in the last Digest, the Camera team mounted the LSST Camera on the camera rotator in early February. Since then, the team has been conducting off-telescope rotation tests, which are featured in another new video on YouTube. LSSTCam will be installed on the telescope very soon, keep an eye on rubinobservatory.org and our social media channels for this news. 

On-sky observations with The Rubin Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel) were re-started February 24th after a three-week pause — first for glycol upgrade work on the summit that required the computer room to be powered off, and then for security upgrades on the compute cluster which runs the control software and processing at the summit. The Observing team has now resumed observations with AuxTel four nights per week, conducting spectroscopic studies of the atmosphere and sending data to the US Data Facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for photometric processing.

A nationwide power outage in Chile affected construction activities on February 25-26. While the summit has powerful backup generators and contingency plans for power disruptions, the extended outage presented some challenges, including impacts on communications. Work carried on safely thanks to a quick response and extra coordination across teams.

Rubin in the Media

A story about Rubin Observatory and the LSST Camera featuring an interview with Aaron Roodman, Deputy Director of Rubin Construction from SLAC, aired on local television in San Francisco on February 21st: “Stanford scientists work to create a high-definition movie of the cosmos.”

LSST Discovery Alliance Announcements

The LINCC Frameworks Office Hours series, which began on January 23rd, continues virtually at 1pm ET / 10am PT / 7pm CET on most Thursdays (the second Thursday of every month the LINCC Frameworks tech talk series will be held in place of office hours. See these events and access Zoom links on the LSST-DA public calendar.

Operations Updates

A productive Rubin Data Facilities meeting took place at IN2P3 in Lyon, France on February 11-13 with representatives from the US Data Facility, French Data Facility, and UK Data Facility and members of the Rubin Data Management and System Performance teams. The busy three-day meeting featured fruitful discussions and progress in preparing for upcoming data previews and data releases as Rubin transitions toward Operations. A group photo from the meeting is available in the Gallery. 

A new version of RTN-011, “Rubin Observatory Plans for an Early Science Program,” is available at https://rtn-011.lsst.io/ and on Zenodo. 

All are welcome to attend Rubin Science Assemblies: weekly virtual sessions that focus on learning to use the Rubin data products, pipelines, and services. Students and anyone new to Rubin are particularly encouraged to drop in.

Reminder: If you plan to work with Rubin Data in the future, we encourage you to sign up for an account on the Rubin Science Platform now. This will allow you to get familiar with the interface, work out any issues, and get your data rights verified by the project so you can be sure to get data immediately when Data Preview 1 (DP1) is released. Rubin Data Rights holders can sign up for an account any time by following the instructions on the Rubin Data Science platform. 

Personnel Announcements & Opportunities:

Open positions with Rubin can be found on the Rubin hiring page.

Info for Project Members:

Nominate someone deserving for a future staff 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, Zeljko, Bob, or Phil, 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 use this form (login required) to make 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): 

2025

March 11-13	Rubin Joint Technical Meeting 2025 at SLAC, Menlo Park, CA
June 8-12	AAS 246 Summer Meeting, Anchorage, AK
June 25-29	European Astronomical Society (EAS) annual meeting, Cork, Ireland
July 21-25	Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) meeting, Urbana-Champaign, IL & virtual
July 28-August 1	Rubin Community Workshop 2025, Tucson, AZ
September 14-19	LSST@Europe7, Poznan, Poland