Rubin Digest 15 October 2019

15 October 2019

Project Science News

On October 1st, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) launched NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF’s NOIR Lab), which integrates operations of all of NSF’s nighttime astronomical facilities. LSST Operations will be one of the five facilities included in this new organization.

The LSST Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) cell assembly has been successfully integrated with the M1M3 mirror surrogate inside the LSST summit facility building. On October 10th, the mirror surrogate was lifted off the cell’s static supports with the system of hard points and pneumatic actuators that will support the weight of the mirror during telescope operations. Many LSST team members in Tucson, La Serena, and Cerro Pachón contributed to this exciting milestone, and photos of the event are available in the LSST Gallery. 

The filter exchange system for the LSST Camera has left IN2P3 in Paris, France in early October for delivery to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA. The filter exchange system is the product of more than 224,000 hours of collaborative work, over a decade, by five IN2P3 CNRS labs. The system holds and switches five filters within the camera to observe in different wavelengths, and a sixth filter is manually replaced in the system periodically for the full spectral coverage. The entire filter exchange system consists of several parts; the carousel and back flange left Paris by plane and will arrive at SLAC soon. The other elements of the system, including the autochanger and the loader, left on October 7th for a long journey of 35 days at sea to arrive in Oakland, California and then on to SLAC. Follow @LSST_France on twitter for info and updates. 

At SLAC, the LSST Camera team recently used a mass simulator to test the assembly  stand for the telescope’s 3,200-megapixel digital camera. Get more information and watch the video at this link. 

Save the date: the LSST Project will host the LSST Algorithms Workshop in Princeton, NJ, on March 17-19, 2020, on the topic of image processing and algorithms for LSST. The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for the presentation of the algorithmic challenges faced by LSST, and to solicit feedback and ideas as to how these algorithms can best meet the scientific needs of the community. For info, visit the workshop website.

Registration is now open for Towards Science in Chile with LSST 2019, which will take place December 9-10 in Chile. This is the fifth in an annual series of successful workshops to help prepare the Chilean community for the large volume of data coming from LSST. The two-day workshop will feature tutorial sessions about the different tools that are, and will be, available to the community. More info is available at this link, register by November 15th. 

LSST in the Media

The LSST Camera team and its work at SLAC was recently featured in a popular YouTube video from the series “Physics Girl.” The video provides a behind-the-scenes look at the unveiling of the LSST camera lenses in the clean room at SLAC, and features interviews with LSST Project members Margaux Lopez and Aaron Roodman. Watch the video at this link. 

Information for Project Members

Don’t forget, you can submit photos for this year’s “A Day in the Life of LSST Construction” (DITL) video until October 18th! Click here for details on how to submit your photos. DITL videos from previous years can be viewed at this link. 

A JIRA-based workflow is now in place for those traveling to Chile. The first step is still to submit a Travel Request via the Reqless system. Once that TR is approved, the traveler will receive an email notification that prompts them to submit planning details through JIRA. 

Personnel News

Lee Kelvin joined the Data Management (DM) subsystem as Data Release Pipelines Software Scientist on October 1st. As a member of the DM team, Lee will help develop the Data Release Pipelines, with an initial focus on sky background estimation.

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2019

November 6-8: Kavli Petabytes to Science Data Inclusion Revolution Workshop, Boston, MA

December 9-10: Towards Science in Chile with LSST 2019, Concepción, Chile*

2020

January 4-8: American Astronomical Society (AAS) 235th Meeting, Honolulu, HI

January 22-23: AMCL Meeting, SLAC, CA

March 17-19: LSST Algorithms Workshop, Princeton, NJ