Rubin Digest 27 August 2019

27 August 2019

Project & Science News

More than 300 participants attended the 2019 LSST Project and Community Workshop, an opportunity for LSST Project and Science Community members to network, share progress, and discuss upcoming challenges. Read more about LSST 2019, held August 12-16 in Tucson, AZ, at this link. A high-resolution version of the team photo taken at the workshop is available in the LSST Gallery.

A new video promoting LSST premiered during the welcome plenary at LSST 2019. The video features footage collected from attendees at LSST 2018 as part of an ongoing Education and Public Outreach project called “StoryTime Domain.”  The video can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded from the LSST Gallery. 

The LSST Science Advisory Committee (SAC) has reviewed the Letters of Intent that were submitted for developing community event brokers for LSST. Based on the high quality and varied science goals of these letters, all letter-writers are encouraged to submit full proposals. The project plans to issue the formal call for proposals late this calendar year. We anticipate the full proposals to be due in the second quarter of 2020; they will be evaluated by a subcommittee of the SAC.  

The LSST Data Management (DM) team has organized and published “LSST Answers to Community Broker FAQs,” which provides answers to questions posed by broker developers and the science community at the June 2019 LSST Community Brokers Workshop. The DM team welcomes additional questions or comments at the same link.

The L1L2 assembly, which incorporates of two of the three LSST Camera lenses, was received at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on August 15th, and initial inspections revealed no issues. The L1L2 assembly was constructed by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation (BATC) and Arizona Optical Systems (AOS), and was shipped from Tucson, AZ. The third lens (L3) will soon undergo a final acceptance review at Thales SESO (TSESO) in France and is expected to ship to SLAC in September.

Also at SLAC, the LSST Camera Integration and Test (I&T) team continues to integrate production rafts with the Camera cryostat at the SLAC IR2 Cleanroom Facility. So far, I&T has installed the four Corner Raft Tower Modules (CRTMs) and four Raft Tower Modules (RTMs). Photos of the installation progress are available at this link. The I&T team will install another five RTMs during this first phase of focal plane integration, which is expected to be completed in early September. I&T will install the remaining 12 RTMs in a second phase of integration, which is expected to continue into the fourth quarter of calendar year 2019.

On Cerro Pachón, the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) surrogate has been integrated with the M1M3 cell on the M1M3 transport cart in the LSST Summit Facility building. The mirror surrogate is a steel structure that simulates the mass and center of gravity of the glass M1M3 mirror, and will be used for testing of the mirror support and control systems during integration of the M1M3 mirror cell assembly, as well as initial on-telescope testing. Photos of the integrated cell, surrogate, and transport cart are available in the LSST Gallery.

Personnel News

Jeffrey Urban joined the Telescope and Site subsystem as Opto-Mechanical Integration Lead on August 12. Jeffrey will be working in Tucson with frequent travel to Chile. He will be providing supervision of the technicians involved in the assembly, installation, operation, and maintenance of the M1M3 cell assembly. 

LSST has several exciting positions available—current openings can be found on the LSST hiring website. Help spread the word! 

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2019

September 11-13: AMCL meeting, La Serena, Chile

September 19: Getting Ready for LSST: 5+million small bodies, 1+billion observations workshop at ESPC-DPS 2019 meeting, Geneva, Switzerland*

September 26-27: Midwest Workshop on Supernovae and Transients, Columbus, OH

September 30-October 4: Managing Follow-up Observations in the Era of ZTF and LSST Workshop, Pasadena, CA*

October 7-9: Untangle the Skein with Scarlet: LSST De-blending Pipeline Application Workshop, Naples, Italy

November 6-8: Kavli Petabytes to Science Data Inclusion Revolution Workshop, Boston, MA

2020

January 4-8: American Astronomical Society (AAS) 235th Meeting, Honolulu, HI