Rubin Digest 06 October 2020

6 October 2020

Project & Science News

A productive meeting of the AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR), AURA’s oversight and advocacy committee for Rubin, took place virtually on September 23-24. The report from the committee was submitted to the Rubin management team shortly after the meeting, allowing the leadership team to efficiently begin addressing the committee’s recommendations.

Limited construction activities resumed on Cerro Pachón on September 28th, coinciding with the easing of the quarantine restrictions for the La Serena area, and following a thorough review to ensure that summit work could resume safely. Work will ramp up gradually over the next few months to ensure the team has time to re-adapt to working on the summit, and to adjust to the new COVID-19 protocols and procedures that are now in place. During the first week of the restart, a team of approximately 15 to 20 individuals worked on the summit for three days. Activities included general inspections, dining facility improvements, preparation of equipment, and beginning the replacement of fittings inside the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) cell.

The Data Management (DM) team has posted a memo for the science community on community.lsst.org regarding DM support for Rubin Observatory data products, pipelines, and services. Data Management has been providing this support on a best-effort basis during Construction, with requests for support increasing substantially as development progresses. Going forward, best-effort support from the DM team will be done via community.lsst.org and not via email and chat platforms—DM will redirect any requests received in email or chat to the Community Forum. This initiative is part of a broader effort to build an engaged, self-supporting science community.

A new category has been added to community.lsst.org. The Equity and Justice initiatives category (login required) will host discussions regarding Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Rubin community, the field of astronomy, and our broader society. All are invited to post new topics and participate in discussions about initiatives and practices to create a more just and equitable scientific community, starting with Rubin. To start, this category will be the primary online venue for asynchronous discussion associated with the recently-announced monthly Inclusion Discussion Series (login required), which anyone in the Rubin community is welcome to join.

An additional discussion series, with each session based on a different TED Talk video, has been scheduled for the 2nd Monday of each month. The goal of the series is to allow discussions about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion topics with a focus on learning. The series is one of the actions described in this Workplace Culture Improvement Proposal. All are welcome; follow Rubin’s #inclusion Slack channel for updates and information on participating.

Operations News

The Rubin Operations team has finalized a contract with Google for cloud services that will allow hosting of the Interim Data Facility (IDF). The IDF will provide a flexible platform for the Operations team to deploy as-built systems (data processing and the Rubin Science Platform) from the Construction team, and get experience running them and supporting the community in their use in pre-Operations. The team will start by working on an initial “Data Preview” in the IDF based on simulated images and associated catalogs from the Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC).

The first “Boot Camp” for Rubin Observatory Operations will take place virtually on October 13-15. The event will familiarize Rubin staff and collaborators with the current plans for Operations, as well as provide more detailed information for individuals working on Operations activities in 2021. A detailed agenda and connection information will be available soon.

Personnel Announcements

In August, the following individuals joined the pre-Operations Data Production team: Brian Yanny and Kenneth Herner (at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), and Serey Padolski and William Strecker-Kellogg (at Brookhaven National Laboratory). Matthias Wittgen also began working with the pre-Ops Data Production team as a Science Software Engineer on October 1st, and will be based at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Upcoming Meetings with Rubin Observatory Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2020

October 27-28: LSST Enabling Science 2020 Broker Workshop, Virtual*

November 8-12: Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) Meeting, Virtual

December 13-18: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Conference, Virtual

2021

Jan 11-15: AAS 237th Meeting, Virtual

 

Your contributions to the Rubin Observatory News Digest are welcomed. Please email updates or items of general interest to communications-team@lists.lsst.org. Rubin Observatory News Digest archives and other Rubin Observatory news items are available online at http://lsst.org/news.