rubinann22005 — Announcement
Rubin Digest 22 March 2022
30 March 2022
PROJECT & SCIENCE NEWS
At SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the final Camera electro-optical run with the bare focal plane (i.e., the Cryostat with the flat window installed) ended in February. Over 15,000 full focal plane images and over 42,000 single raft images were collected. These laboratory test images included darks, biases, flat-field, and Fe55 x-rays, as well as images with star-sized or millimeter-sized spots—all used for Camera requirements verification and characterization.
Also at SLAC, the L3 lens was successfully installed on the LSST Camera cryostat in mid-March. The L3 lens, just under 19” in diameter and just under 2.5” thick, is the smallest of the three lenses in the camera and serves as the vacuum window to the cryostat where the sensors and readout electronics are housed. This is the first lens to be installed in its final location on the camera and this enables the team to move forward, adding more components including the camera body, the filter exchange system, the shutter, and the last two lenses. Photos of the installation are available in the Gallery.
The Tucson Test Stand is now fully operational at Rubin Construction headquarters in Tucson, AZ; it will serve as the primary test stand for software development projects until an additional test stand is set up in La Serena later this year. The Rubin Observatory Test Stands provide a means to test modifications to software before deploying them to the summit. Tucson is a strategic site for a test stand because it will be the headquarters for Rubin Operations—a control room has also been built in Tucson to run simulated observing campaigns, and to monitor actual observing campaigns in Chile. Ultimately, software will be tested in Tucson, then tested in La Serena, then deployed to the summit.
Weather on the summit has remained clear, and the number of workers on the summit is the highest it’s been since the start of the pandemic. Of the ~100 people working on the summit, 32 are working on the dome; activities include adding second-layer cladding of corrugated aluminum on the vertical walls, and installing metal-clad insulation panels at the base of the dome where it meets the fixed lower enclosure. Recent construction photos are available in the Gallery.
The Rubin IT team on the summit has installed fiber-optic cables that connect the computer room on the second floor of the observatory to the top of the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA). Last week they ran a test, sending a light signal along each cable from one end to the other and confirming the engineering success of the connection. During telescope operations this cable will transfer data from the LSST Camera to the data center on the summit. Photos of the activity are available in the Gallery.
Rubin Observatory swag items, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, and more, are available for purchase in our not-for-profit online store.
LSST in the Media
An informative article about the LSST Camera’s data acquisition system was published on the SLAC website on March 10th. Read it at this link.
Operations Updates
Save the date: The first meeting of the Rubin Users Committee that will be open to all is scheduled for April 14th at 8:00 a.m. PDT. Connection information will be posted on the Users Committee webpage.
Announcements & Opportunities
Congratulations to Federica Bianco on her appointment to a new position, Deputy Project Scientist for Rubin Construction, effective February 1st, 2022. Federica is based at the University of Delaware and will be working with Steve Ritz, Project Scientist for Rubin Construction. Federica will be stepping down from her role as Rubin Observatory/LSST Science Collaborations Coordinator.
Current opportunities to join the Rubin team can be found on the Rubin hiring website.
Info for Project Members
If you’d like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Victor or Zeljko, please fill out this form to indicate your preferred (and backup) date and time.
There is also an anonymous “suggestion box” for anyone to offer feedback at this link.
Upcoming Meetings with Rubin Observatory Involvement
(those with an asterisk* are LSSTC funded):
2022
| March 28-30 | “From Data to Software to Science with the Rubin Observatory LSST”* New York City/virtual |
| May 3-5 | AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR) meeting, Tucson, AZ |
| June 20-24 | Bayesian Deep Learning workshop*, Paris, France |
| July 26-28 |
Supermassive Black Hole Studies with the Legacy Survey of |
| August 1-12 | La Serena School for Data Science: “Applied Tools for Data-driven Sciences" |
| August 8-12 | Rubin Project and Community Workshop 2022, Tucson, AZ |
| September 26-30 | RR Lyrae and Cepheid stars meeting: “Large-scale Surveys as Bridges between Spectroscopy and Photometry,” Island of La Palma |
Upcoming Deadlines:
2022
| April 30 | Participate in DP0.2 |
