Rubin Observatory Digest for 18 April 2023

18 April 2023

Project & Science News

The Rubin Operations Project and Community Workshop 2023 (PCW) will take place at the Marriott University Park in Tucson, AZ the week of August 7, 2023. The meeting website is now live and we are accepting session proposals (Login required) through May 19th (requires Rubin credentials or creation of an account). You can also indicate interest in childcare grants using this form (deadline April 28th). 

Following a Construction/Commissioning Schedule workshop held on April 6th, the updated Project completion date has been adjusted to February 2025, with System First Light forecast for October 2024. The completion date is a forecast from the detailed project plan to completion that will be updated as we progress through the challenging but rewarding next steps of system integration and test. The forecast date does not include the expected schedule contingency we will build into the plan forward as we work with the NSF and DOE on the final phases of the project.

Thanks to everyone who uploaded photos for this year’s Day in the Life (DITL) video! The video is now available to enjoy on Rubin’s YouTube channel.

The summit team recently installed four refrigeration cabinets containing the compressors for the LSST Camera refrigeration system underneath the floor of the telescope. The cabinets are attached to a beam, so they rotate with the telescope in azimuth but do not tilt in elevation. To put them in, the team took two floor panels out of the telescope floor and lowered the cabinets down through the hole onto a mobile lift table, then rolled each one to the correct location and installed it. These cabinets will be tested with the Refrigeration Pathfinder hardware that is part of the Commissioning Camera assembly, already installed on the telescope. A timelapse video of the installation is available in the Gallery.  

As reported in the last Digest, the Telescope Mount Assembly is now substantially complete, see this recent news item for more details about this milestone achievement.

Visit the Gallery to see a very cool coadded image shared at a recent Rubin All-Hands Meeting. The image of a dense stellar field around the Small Magellanic Cloud was created with data from ~30 overlapping visits of the Rubin Auxiliary Telescope, using the g,r,and i filters.

Operations Updates:

All Data Preview 0 (DP0) delegates are invited to a DP0 Virtual Summer School, scheduled for June 12-16, 2023. This Summer School has been designed as an accelerated learning experience to enable DP0 delegates to do Rubin-related research, focusing on the DP0.2 dataset. More information and a link to register are available on community.lsst.org. Space is available for new DP0 delegates. If you'd like to attend the DP0 VSS, start with the DP0 getting started checklist, then register for the summer school.

Personnel Announcements & Opportunities:

Aaron Meisner joined the pre-Operations System Performance Team on April 3rd as Rubin Documentation Specialist. Aaron will be a member of the Community Science Team (formerly the Community Engagement Team).

Jhonatan Amado joined the pre-Operations Data Management team as Infrastructure & Support software developer on April 10th. Jhonatan will be based at Fermilab and will be supporting Rubin use of Kubernetes and other systems.

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. 

Rubin Observatory swag items, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, and more, are available for purchase in our not-for-profit online store. 

Upcoming Meetings with Rubin Observatory Involvement

(those with an asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2023
May 18-19	AURA Management Council for Rubin Observatory (AMCR) meeting, location TBA
June 12-14	LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration meeting, University Paris Cité
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
August 21-25	Joint Status Review, Tucson
September 25-29	LSST@Europe5, Poreč, Croatia
November 5-9	Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems (ADASS) conference, Tucson, AZ

Upcoming Deadlines:

2023
April28	Indicate interest in PCW childcare grants(Login required)
May 19	Propose a session (Login required) at Rubin 2023 PCW[]