Rubin Digest 25 January 2023

25 January 2023

Project & Science News

Rubin Observatory was highly visible at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS241) in Seattle WA on January 8-12. In addition to numerous presentations and posters highlighting Rubin/LSST science, Rubin staff hosted a booth in the exhibit hall and a well-attended evening Town Hall at the meeting. More information and a link to event photos can be found in this recent news post. 

We invite you to admire the near-complete status of the Rubin Observatory dome cladding in a recent drone video. The outside of the dome now has weatherproof aluminum cladding covering all wall and roof surfaces as well as most of the operable louver panels. Inside the dome, the mechanisms and drive control for the large aperture shutters are being finished. The shutters, rear-access door, overhead cranes, lights and all other mechanized electrified elements on the rotating structure will soon be outfitted with their permanent power connection. Full completion of dome construction is expected by early 2024. 

The Phase 2 Recommendations of the Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC) for the initial implementation of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) have been released. More contextual information and a link to the recommendations document can be found on community.lsst.org.

Save the date for LSST@Europe5: “Towards LSST Science, Together!” a conference to collaboratively develop LSST science opportunities in Europe that will be held in Poreč, Croatia, September 25–29, 2023. The meeting will be conducted in a hybrid format to enable access for remote participants and the wider Rubin/LSST community. More details can be found in the first meeting announcement. 

Staff highlights for January are now available on the Rubin project website. This month, read about your colleagues Neven Caplar, Holger Drass, Yijung Kang, Guido Maulen, and David Jiménez Mejías. After this month, the Rubin staff highlights initiative will transition to a new program, led by the Education and Public Outreach team, called Rubin Voices.

Join Rubin Construction and NOIRLab in celebrating Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17th! Leading up to that day we will be building “kindness chains” at all NOIRLab site locations, and inviting our remote team members to post messages that recognize and celebrate our colleagues on the #rubin-be-kind Slack channel, where you can also get more information about this initiative.

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:

As part of the Rubin In-kind program, Rubin US community scientists will have an opportunity to become Participating Scientists in the ULTRASAT mission being deployed by the Weizmann Institute in Israel. ULTRASAT is an ultraviolet, time domain satellite mission covering the “whole sky” for up to six years starting in 2026. Synergies with Rubin time domain and other science make this a great opportunity. US scientists are enabled to participate in ULTRASAT through the collaboration with NASA and Rubin. The selection of Participating US Scientists will be done through a NASA Roses opportunity. Letters of intent (LOI) which will help inform the membership of the selection committee are due January 23rd. Full proposals are due March 31st and do not require that a LOI be submitted. 

The science community is invited to participate in a virtual workshop to continue discussion of computational use cases with the Rubin LSST, and to explore how they can be paired with specific In-kind contributed computing resources (Independent Data Access Centers and Scientific Processing Centers, IDACs and SPCs). The workshop will be held March 21-22, 2023, over two half-days. More information is available on community.lsst.org, or visit the meeting website to pre-register.

LSST Corporation News

LSSTC has an exciting announcement about the LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing program: on January 26, 2023, at 10am Pacific time on the LINCC Tech Talks Zoom, members of LINCC Frameworks leadership at LSSTC, CMU, and UW will hold an initial information session about the LINCC Frameworks Incubators program. The LINCC Frameworks team is working to provide robust open-source software tools to support analysis of LSST data at scale, and a key part of this is forming collaborations with the LSST science community. For more announcements of this sort, please sign up for the LINCC mailing list; for regular information about LINCC Tech Talks, please join #lincc-tech-talks on the LSSTC Slack workspace.

LSSTC and the IceCube Collaboration (IceCube) are pleased to announce a pilot childcare support program generously funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation. The partnership pilot program will provide childcare funding for four conferences over the next 12 months—two LSST conferences (the Rubin Project & Community Workshop and another LSSTC-sponsored conference) and two IceCube conferences. The program is designed to facilitate equitable participation in scientific meetings and reduce the burden of childcare costs for attending caregivers. Conference attendees will be invited to request funding to cover childcare costs above and beyond their usual expenses. Ask Beth Willman (bwillman at lsstc dot org) or Ranpal Gill (rgill at lsst dot org) for more details.

Personnel Announcements & Opportunities:

The Rubin Community is saddened by the loss of Simon Krughoff, who passed away on January 14th. Simon spent over a decade helping build Rubin Observatory, first as the manager of the Alert Production Team at UW and then as the science lead for the Data Management SQuARE Team in Tucson. Simon will be deeply missed by his colleagues and friends at Rubin. A collection of memories and tributes to Simon can be found on community.lsst.org.

Shaung Liang joined the Rubin Operations team as an Observing Specialist on November 1st. Shaung is currently based at SLAC and will relocate to Chile when the camera ships later this year. On the summit, he will work initially on observing with the Rubin Auxiliary Telescope, supporting commissioning of the Telescope Mount Assembly, and supporting camera re-verification in the summit white room.

Luis Matamala joined the summit Safety team on January 9th as a safety engineer leading the development of a Fatigue Prevention Mitigation Program. Luis will also provide support for documentation, as well as translation of documents and other informative updates.

Peter Vaucher joined the pre-Operations Data Production team as a software developer on January 17th. Peter will be based at SLAC and will be supporting Rubin US Data Facility infrastructure, notably Kubernetes.

Rubin Observatory is now accepting applications for two open positions: Head of Education and Public Outreach (EPO), and Observing Specialist Manager. Details about these and other open positions with Rubin Observatory can be found on the Rubin hiring page.

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 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):

2023

February 27-March 3	Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) Meeting, Virtual
March 14-16	SIT-COM & Data Management Joint Subsystem Meeting, La Serena, Chile
May 17-19	AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR) meeting, location TBA
June 12-16	Statistical Changes in Modern Astronomy (SCMA) VIII, Pennsylvania State University
July 24-28	Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) Meeting, SLAC
August 7-11	Rubin 2023 Project & Community Workshop, Tucson, AZ
September 25-29	LSST@Europe5, Poreč, Croatia