rubinann17009 — Announcement

Rubin Digest 24 March 2017

24 March 2017

Project News

Several members of the LSST team are visiting the Von Ardenne GmbH facility in Dresden, Germany, this week for a Final Design Review of the Coating Plant.  Meanwhile, on Cerro Pachón in Chile, our web cam shows the progress being made on the summit facility with the extensive steel structure of the main building evident and the floor structures inside the dome also extending about the ring wall. Multiple cranes have been working simultaneously on the lower enclosure in preparation for the arrival of the Dome system vendor.

The camera team at SLAC and BNL has now accepted delivery of enough science-grade sensors to complete three rafts.  Fabrication of the second raft is beginning.  Each raft holds 9 sensors; a total of 189 sensors on 21 rafts are required to complete the LSST camera focal plane.  Also, the cryostat grid that holds the rafts in place has been fabricated and delivered to SLAC for testing

The LSST Education and Public Outreach (EPO) has organized a multimedia team to be on Cerro Pachón next week, accompanied by Emily Acosta and several other Site staff,  to document the current state of construction via drone film footage, time-lapse sequences, panorama images, and full dome clips.  The assets will be archived in LSST’s upcoming digital asset management system for project viewing and later use in EPO programs.

Mark your calendar for this year’s Asteroid Day - June 30th, 2017, an annual event organized by the B612 Foundation to raise awareness of the important of early detection of potentially hazardous asteroids.  LSST has been offered an hour of time during the 24-hour live, world-wide, satellite broadcast from Luxembourg dedicated to all things asteroid.  Planning has begun and more information will follow.

AURA hosted former astronaut and co-founder of the B612 Foundation, Russell Schweickart in Chile this week. The tour of the mountain-tops included a tour of the LSST site with a high degree of interest in the near earth object discovery capability of the LSST. As a reminder, check out the LSST Logo storefront at Lands’ End.  There are currently two LSST logos to choose from and they can be applied to most items in the Lands’ End product line.

Corporation News

LSST Science Collaboration Coordinator Lucianne Walkowicz is quoted in the March 23rd edition of Wired Magazine, in an article titled “Astronomers Don’t Point This Telescope—The Telescope Points Them”! The article describes the value of “blind surveys” (like LSST, WFIRST, and the soon to be dedicated HETDEX experiment) for finding rare, interesting objects which are then investigated in the traditional single-observer mode of observational astronomy. 

The LSST Science Advisory Committee (SAC) met on March 5.  Minutes and recommendations from that meeting are available at the SAC website.  The topics covered include the LSST observing strategy and community input into the decision-making process, as well as the plans for LSST commissioning and the distribution of commissioning data to the community. 

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2017

March 20 – 23: ASTRO: Time Series Analysis for Synoptic Surveys and Gravitational Wave Astronomy, International Center for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bengaluru, India

April 3 - 5: LSSTC F2F Board Meeting and Hill Visits, Washington, DC

April  6 & 7: AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) Meeting, Washington, DC

April 3-7: LSST DESC Hack Week *, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

May 1 – 3: NSF Large Facilities Workshop, Baton Rouge and Livingston, LA

May 1 – 5: AURA Board and Member Representatives Annual Meeting, Tucson, AZ

May 12 - 13: LSST Detection of Optical Counterparts of Gravitational Waves*, BNL.  Contact Morgan May for additional information. 

May 22 – 25: Infrastructure for Time Domain Science in the Era of LSST, Tucson, AZ

May 31 - June 2: Supernovae:  The LSST Revolution Workshop *, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

June 12 – 16: Getting Ready for Doing Science with LSST Data,* IN2P3, Lyon, France

June 19 – 21: AURA Workforce and Diversity Committee (WDC), Maui, HI

July 10 - 14: DESC Meeting, Dark Energy School, and Hack Day*, BNL

August 14 – 18: LSST 2017 Project & Community Workshop, Tucson, AZ

September 6 – 8: NSF/DOE Joint Status Review, Tucson, AZ

September 14 – 15: AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) Meeting, Tucson, AZ

November 7 – 9: AURA Workforce & Diversity Committee (WDC), La Serena, Chile