Rubin Digest 17 May 2022

19 May 2022

Project & Science News 

Registration is now open for the Rubin 2022 Project and Community Workshop (PCW) which will take place August 8-12 at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain Resort in Tucson, AZ. Please register by July 8th to ensure you reserve a t-shirt! The deadline to book a hotel is July 15th. Registration and additional details are available on the meeting website.

At Rubin, we believe that promoting a culture of kindness will contribute to a positive reinforcement of happiness among our workforce, reinforce other aspects of our working culture, and lead to positive outcomes for both individuals and our organization. Read more about Rubin’s commitment to kindness at this new page on our website.

A meeting of the AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR) was held in Tucson on May 3-5. This was the last meeting for Vice-Chair Liz Sexton-Kennedy (Fermilab) and Suzanne Hawley (University of Washington), who have served on the AMCR for the last five years. We thank them for their invaluable feedback and contribution to Rubin Observatory and LSST.

A successful observing run with the Rubin Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel) took place May 3-5. The regular observing runs have allowed the team to optimize the telescope performance and improve reliability. Now that the number of necessary AuxTel-specific engineering tasks has decreased, the team plans to shift towards using the platform to prepare for engineering tasks with the main telescope as well as continuing atmospheric characterization studies.

Details about last month’s integration of the cryostat and the camera body at SLAC, originally reported in the April 19th issue of the News Digest, are available in a recent news item published on the Rubin website. 

New photos from the summit, taken on a recent visit by Bob Blum, Director of Rubin Observatory Operations, 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. 

Operations Updates:

The Rubin Operations team presented “Status and Challenges in the Transition to Operations” to the AURA NOIRLab Management Oversight Committee (NMOC) in Washington, DC last week. The committee, chaired by David Rietze, LIGO Lab Director at Caltech, provides management oversight to AURA on the NOIRLab program which includes Rubin Operations. This is the analogous oversight body to the AMCR which reviews the Construction project. Both the NMOC and AMCR are committees of the AURA Board of Directors. The NMOC was supportive of Rubin Operation’s approach to addressing various challenges facing Rubin Observatory and were particularly complimentary of the Data Preview activities being implemented by the operations team in support of operations readiness.

LSST Corporation News:

Dr. Beth Willman will join LSSTC on September 7th, 2022, to become its next Executive Director, taking on the previously separate roles of Chief Executive Officer and Director of Science. Pat Eliason, the current Chief Executive Officer, will overlap with Beth for a few weeks to ensure a smooth transition for the Corporation, and will retire at the end of September. Dr. Jeno Sokoloski will begin her transition from Director of Science to Director of LSSTC’s Catalyst Fellowship and LINCC-related programs. 

Reminder: May 22nd is the deadline for the 2022 Enabling Science Call for Proposals for undergraduate and graduate researchers to obtain funding to support their attendance at the Rubin Project & Community Workshop in August 2022. Details and instructions to apply can be found on the LSSTC website. (Internal Access Only) 

Announcements & Opportunities:

Christopher Dollinger and Olga Vlasova, both based at Fermilab, joined the pre-Operations Data Production team on April 28th.

Current opportunities with Rubin 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

June 12-16	AAS 240 Summer Meeting, Pasadena, CA
June 20-24	Bayesian Deep Learning workshop*, Paris, France
July 19-21	SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation Meeting, Montreal, Canada
July 26-28	Supermassive Black Hole Studies with the Legacy Survey of  Space and Time - 2022: Getting Ready for Rubin Operations*, virtual
August 1-5	DESC Collaboration Meeting, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago
August 1-12	La Serena School for Data Science: “Applied Tools for Data-driven Sciences"
August 8-12	Rubin Project and Community Workshop (PCW) 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, Spain

Upcoming Deadlines:

2022

May 22	Proposals for LSSTC funding for students to attend Rubin PCW (Internal Access Only)
July 8	Register for Rubin PCW (to ensure t-shirt)
July 15	Reserve hotel for Rubin PCW