Announcements

4 January 2022: Representatives of the United States of America, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and the Republic of Korea have signed a new agreement to continue the operations of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. The agreement took effect on 1 January 2022 and ends on 31 December 2027. “With Gemini we've learned a great deal about the Universe that we didn't know before, and we’ve been reminded that there is much yet to learn,” said NOIRLab Director Patrick McCarthy. “As we look to the 2020s, we will continue to deploy the latest technology with international teams to expand the frontiers of astrophysics.” The international Gemini Observatory comprises twin 8.1-meter optical/infrared telescopes, located on two of the best observing sites on the planet. Gemini North is near the summit of Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and Gemini South is on Cerro Pachón, at the edge of the Chilean Andes. Named after the …

22 December 2021: When you open a new tab or window in your web browser, wouldn’t it be nice if that window opened onto a beautiful cosmic vista? A new Google Chrome extension from NSF’s NOIRLab can now make that happen. Once installed, the extension randomly selects one of NOIRLab’s Top 100 images from our gallery and displays it when the user opens a new browser tab or window. In the lower-left corner of the window, the image title and credit are shown next to the NOIRLab logo. (Clicking the title will open a page on the NOIRLab website that provides more information about the image.) Simply reload the window or tab to enjoy a new randomly selected NOIRLab image. To install the extension, visit https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/noirlab with your Chrome browser, and explore some of the awe-inspiring images created by NSF’s NOIRLab. More information NSF’s NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the US center …

9 December 2021: Željko Ivezić will assume the role of Director of Vera C. Rubin Observatory Construction starting on 3 January 2022. Ivezić will succeed Steven Kahn, who will be stepping down to pursue other opportunities. “Željko’s knowledge of the Rubin Observatory system and his commitment to its success are extraordinary, and I am confident that he will lead the Rubin Construction Project to its triumphant conclusion,” Kahn stated. An astronomer at the University of Washington, Ivezić has been involved with Rubin Observatory (previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) since its inception in the early 2000s. He has served for many years as Project Scientist and head of the Project Science Team, and was named Deputy Director of Rubin Observatory Construction in September 2018. In his role as Deputy Director, Ivezić has assisted Kahn and Project Manager Victor Krabbendam in the overall management and direction of the program. He took special …

7 December 2021: Project & Science News This issue of the News Digest will be the last for 2021; look for the next issue in mid-January. Season’s greetings and best wishes for the New Year! Catch up with Rubin Observatory at the American Astronomical Society Winter meeting (AAS239), January 9-13, 2022. If you’ll be at the meeting in Salt Lake City, UT, be sure to stop by the Rubin exhibit booth (you’ll get a chance to win a prize) and attend our Open House on January 11th. If you won’t be at the meeting, you can follow us on social media. On November 23rd, the team on Cerro Pachón used the dome bridge crane and the camera lifting fixture to remove the camera surrogate mass from the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) and place it on the camera cart. The next day, they reversed the operation and inserted the camera surrogate mass back into …

3 December 2021: If you have ever wondered what it’s like to be an astronomer observing the Universe with one of the most powerful astronomical cameras ever built, now is your chance to find out. On Monday 6 December 2021 NSF’s NOIRLab will partner with universities and organizations in Chile to air a public livestream from the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NOIRLab. During the one-hour event, which will start at 10 p.m. CLST / 8 p.m. EST / 6 p.m. MST on 6 December, astronomers Paulina Troncoso from Central University in La Serena, Erika Labbé from the Diego Portales University, Fernanda Urrutia from NOIRLab, and Luis Chavarría from the European Southern Observatory will talk about the observations DECam is making in real time. Created and organized by Troncoso and Labbé under the concept …

23 November 2021: NOIRLab, in conjunction with the University of Hawai‘i’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) and the Maunakea Observatories (MKOs), shared the Universe with learners of all ages at Astroday Kona on Sunday 14 November 2021. The free, open-air event, organized by IfA, attracted over 500 family and visitor participants at the Kona Commons shopping center where shoppers joined observatory staff in activities ranging from making star lei to solar viewing. After a break in 2020 due to the pandemic, AstroDay Kona resumed this year in Kona for the fourth time. The Maunakea observatories were joined by other Hawaiʻi astronomy facilities from Hawaiʻi Island and Maui. IfA Outreach Manager Carolyn Kaichi led the organization of the event and said, “We are extremely grateful to the community partnerships that allow for the continuation of AstroDay in Kona and especially the support of Kona Commons and its staff.” The NOIRLab booth featured handouts including image …

19 November 2021: The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory team that’s developing the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera for Vera C. Rubin Observatory celebrated a very cold day during the last week of October — not because of the weather, but because both of the systems that keep the LSST Camera cool were running successfully together for the first time since January 2021. The LSST Camera generates a lot of heat — because of its size it produces about 10 times more heat than early astronomical cameras. The refrigeration system is needed to maintain the focal plane sensors at their optimal operating temperature, and to remove the heat generated by the associated electronics, without introducing vibrations that would affect image quality. The camera team has developed two separate systems to achieve this: the “Cold” system, which cools the raft electronics, and the “Cryo” system, which cools the camera’s charge-coupled devices (CCDs). …

19 November 2021: The Project Director of the US Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP), Sidney Wolff, has announced her retirement, leaving behind a legacy of nearly fifty years leading the United States’s top ground-based observatories. Stepping up as the new Project Director of the US-ELTP is NOIRLab’s Deputy Director, Beth Willman. The US-ELTP is a collaboration between NOIRLab, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), coordinating efforts to build the next-generation of 25–30-meter aperture ground-based telescopes, one in each hemisphere. The US-ELTP recently came top in the list of priorities for ground-based observatories in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Astro2020 Decadal Survey, which recommends the direction of US astronomy over the next ten years. Wolff has shepherded the fledgling US-ELTP through its critical formative years, preparing it for the Astro2020 report and establishing a firm foundation for working with the National Science Foundation (NSF), both of …

16 November 2021: Project & Science News Rubin Observatory will host an exhibit booth at the American Astronomical Society Winter Meeting (AAS239), to be held January 9-13, 2022, in Salt Lake City, UT. There is also a Rubin Observatory Open House scheduled during the meeting, on the evening of January 11th. At SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the LSST Camera team achieved full cooldown of the focal plane and electronics on November 3rd, with both cooling systems running together for the first time since January 2021. Read more about the achievement in this news item. The Rubin Auxiliary Telescope (Aux Tel) team has continued conducting on-sky observing runs on a monthly basis, with a focus on gathering data for engineering performance analysis. The team shared this image, taken on November 3rd during the most recent Aux Tel observing run, which shows the effect on stars observed during a 5.7 magnitude earthquake centered north of …

15 November 2021: Janice Lee, a member of the international PHANGS collaboration, has been recognized by the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards, presented at the 2021 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis in St. Louis, Missouri. The Reader's Choice award for Best Use of High Performance Computing in Physical Sciences was given for work using convolutional neural networks and deep learning in the analysis of the PHANGS-HST Treasury Survey, led by Lee. The associated scientific paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and describes a proof-of-concept experiment that demonstrates that deep learning can successfully be used for large-scale classification of compact star clusters detected in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging of nearby spiral galaxies. Lee, together with Bradley Whitmore of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Eliu Huerta of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, accepted the award on …

9 November 2021: NSF’s NOIRLab is presenting about the importance of clear and dark skies at a virtual event named “Chilean Astronomy: A window to the Universe”, organized by the Chilean Embassy in Singapore in partnership with the Science Centre Singapore. The four-day program highlights the astronomical infrastructures hosted by Chile, and includes the possibility of interacting with experts, such as representatives from astronomical societies and some of the biggest observatories in the world operating in Chile. The topics of the event range from star hunting, light pollution, and inclusivity in astronomy, to the streaming of related documentaries like Big Astronomy: People, Places, Discoveries. Juan Seguel, Education & Engagement Specialist at NOIRLab, presented a talk called Astronomy and light pollution + Globe at Night Campaign where he described the Globe at Night project and addressed questions from the audience. The event will be live-streamed via Science Centre Singapore's YouTube channel, and the Embassy …

8 November 2021: Monday 8 November to Friday 12 November 2021 sees the tenth version of Viaje al Universo, one of the education programs that NSF’s NOIRLab organizes in Chile to bring the wonders of the Universe to students, teachers and families. Although all the activities this year will again be carried out in virtual form, owing to the pandemic, this year's version will be partly hybrid: students will receive different education kits that will allow them to participate from their homes or schools in activities that are taught during Viaje al Universo week. Thanks to the kits, students will have the necessary materials to closely follow workshops in which they can learn about the colors of stars, the planets of the Solar System and their different masses, spectroscopy, the layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, the Sun, and the constellations, as well as about how to care for and preserve dark skies. Each …

5 November 2021: The decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics is a powerful study that our community uses to drive strategy and vision for the next decade of federally funded transformative science. The 2020 report, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s (Astro2020), was published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on 4 November 2021. We are honored that the community, via the decadal survey, has ranked the US Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP) as the highest ground-based priority in Pathways to Discovery. The US-ELTP’s vision is to provide US-based astronomers with nationally funded all-sky observing access, facilitated by NSF's NOIRLab, to two of the world’s most powerful telescopes now under construction: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The US-ELTP is committed to our goal of realizing both telescopes as a coordinated bi-hemispheric frontier effort. The report stated that “Participation in the U.S. …

4 November 2021: For more than sixty years the Decadal Surveys have embodied a consensus vision for our field. As the US national organization for open-access nighttime optical astronomy, NOIRLab stands ready, along with our managing organization the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), to join our community in advocating for and contributing to the implementation of the Survey’s recommendations. As a partner in the US Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP), we are issuing the following statement: The US Extremely Large Telescope Program is grateful for the Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s Decadal Survey process and is now reviewing the recommendations in detail. The Decadal Survey has a rich history of driving technological innovation and expanding scientific boundaries, and we are proud to be part of that story. Our visionary program aims to provide US astronomers with nationally-funded observing access to the entire sky. The program …

2 November 2021: Project & Science News The Second SCOC-Science Collaborations Workshop will be held virtually on Nov 16-18. The main goal of this workshop is to discuss draft recommendation for the initial survey strategy formulated by the Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC), which is available at this link. More details can be found at the workshop website. Registration is open until Nov 8th: please register if you plan to attend. Data Management team members Wil O’Mullane, Frossie Economou, and Dino Bektesevic (University of Washington) gave presentations on Rubin’s early experiences with Google Cloud at the Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems (ADASS) XXXI meeting, held October 24-28. The Data Management group also provided substantial support for the Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) Sprint Week, held October 25-29. The Camera team at SLAC has begun moving the six LSST Camera filters into their custom storage box using the filter loader with assistance from …

29 October 2021: The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded its 2020 Project Management Excellence Award to the project team for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which recently embarked on a five-year mission to create the largest 3D map of the sky. The most powerful multi-object survey spectrograph in the world, DESI is an international science collaboration managed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) with primary funding for construction and operations from the DOE’s Office of Science. DESI resides at the retrofitted Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. Since beginning its survey in May 2021, DESI has already gathered spectra from approximately four million galaxies as part of its goal to observe over 30 million galaxies and 2.4 million quasars. This survey will help astronomers to construct a 3D map of the Universe in unprecedented detail and to better …

29 October 2021: The SATCON2 workshop addressed a watershed moment in the transformation of space. In 2018, a few thousand operational satellites orbited the Earth. By 2030, there may be more than 100,000. A massive cloud of satellites presents significant to existential impacts on ground-based astronomy, and further impacts that extend to the environment, astro-tourism, and human health. While space offers many new frontiers and benefits to humanity, the sudden advance of spacefaring technology to the private sector comes with many side effects that should be carefully considered. SATCON2 brought together members of many communities: astronomy, satellite operators, environmental and dark-sky advocates, and representatives from diverse and underrepresented communities. The details of their comprehensive work are presented in 4 reports from the working groups — Observations, Algorithms, Community Engagement and Policy — which have been compiled and are being released today. The Observations and Algorithms working groups explored some SATCON1 recommendations directly, and …

22 October 2021: Members of the team that developed the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF) software system are this year’s recipients of the Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) Prize for an Outstanding Contribution to Astronomical Software. This is the second year this prize has been awarded by the organization. Developed at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), now NSF’s NOIRLab, IRAF is a general-purpose software system used for decades by numerous ground- and space-based observatories as a standard platform to reduce and analyze scientific data. The award is for the design and development of the core IRAF system and science packages, which have enabled almost 25,000 scientific papers since its first public release in 1986. The three recipients of the prize are NOIRLab scientist Frank Valdes and former NOAO staff members Doug Tody and Lindsey Davis. The award recognizes the outstanding contribution of IRAF to the astronomical software community and …

21 October 2021: Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is under construction at Cerro Pachón in the Coquimbo Region of Chile, has broken two Guinness World Records. One record goes to the project's digital camera for having the highest resolution in the world, and the other recognizes the biggest of the camera’s three optical lenses as being the largest in the world. Funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE), Rubin Observatory includes an NSF-funded world-class 8.4-meter telescope coupled to LSSTCam, a DOE-funded 3.2-gigapixel camera — the largest digital camera ever made for astronomy. Rubin Observatory's goal is to conduct a 10-year study of the sky that will deliver a huge volume of images and data, addressing some of the most pressing questions about the structure and evolution of the Universe, as well as dark energy and dark matter. Rubin Observatory will use its world’s-largest optical lens, measuring 1.57 …

21 October 2021: After nearly a decade of work, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has delivered the last of the six filters built for use with Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time Camera (LSSTCam). The filters have now all arrived at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where they will be integrated into the camera. “We’re all very excited,” said LLNL engineer Vincent Riot, who has been the Rubin LSSTCam camera manager for the past four years. “The optical lenses and filters have been a long time in the making. This project has been under way for about 10 years. Now, we’ll soon see the integration of all of the camera’s components as part of the telescope’s commissioning.” The six filters were fabricated using glass raw material from the state of New York, which was shipped to Thales Space SESO in France. Thales Space SESO shaped …