Introduction
Those with ideas for future newsletter items should contact the LSST:UK Project Managers (George Beckett and Terry Sloan: lusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk), while everyone is encouraged to subscribe to the Rubin Observatory Digest for more general news from the US observatory team.
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Workpackage highlights from STFC Project Assurance Report (PAR)
Workpackage | Highlights |
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WP 1.4 Coordination of LSST:UK Contributions to Commissioning | Issued to the UK community an EoI Call for Rubin Observatory Commissioning. An accompanying briefing paper aims to assist colleagues in preparing for and contributing to commissioning. This is in the context of the current pause in Rubin construction, and the ongoing negotiations of the UK’s in-kind contributions to the Rubin Observatory and LSST Science Collaborations. This call closed on October 30th 2020. |
WP 2.1 DAC Management | Data Access Centre requirements have been integrated into the LSST:UK Science Requirements Document (Version 3.0, April 2020). |
WP2.2 Data Ingestion and Publication | A set of data transfer and ingest experiments were undertaken, between IN2P3 (the Rubin data-processing facility in France) and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. These are documented in D2.2.1. Following on from this, work is underway to ingest ancillary data for the next iteration of the DAC (UKDAC1), including ingestion of PanSTARSS DR2 and ZTF DR2. |
WP2.4 Provision of the DAC Platform | The DAC team has begun collaborating with Rubin Observatory staff in the United States and France around the development of the Rubin Science Platform (RSP). WP2.4 staff are customising the baseline RSP for UK-specific ancillary datasets and IRIS IAM authentication, towards the roll-out of an updated RSP in the UK DAC in 2021Q1. |
WP2.5 Science Support | Deliverable D2.5.1 “Training resources for LSST:UK DAC users” was completed. This describes an initial release of documentation for users of current and future services accessed via the UK’s LSST Data Access Centre (DAC). This documentation release is necessarily limited in scope given that the UK DAC is still being developed. It comprises existing documentation for the Lasair alert broker and a very preliminary set of documentation for the LSST Science Platform (LSP). The LSP is the set of data services to be provided by the Rubin Observatory to support analysis of LSST data products. |
WP2.3/3.2 Lasair | The team has: completed and released Lasair v2.0; tested the Cassandra database architecture on IRIS and reviewed it as a future implementation for LSST scale alerts (Report in preparation at the time of writing); completed a science requirements and functionality review led by the LSST:UK PoCs; tested the RAPID light-curve classifier and published a technical summary paper. |
WP3.5 LSST and near-infrared data fusion | The WP team has copied over onto the IRIS HPC infrastructure all publicly available VISTA imaging survey datasets and work is now ongoing to develop the pipeline to process the VISTA pixels through the Rubin stack. Current efforts in the WP are focused on understanding photometric calibration issues as well as better understanding the noise properties of the resulting images produced by the pipeline. The current plan is to have a test region in the SXDS field processed and available for scientific validation by December 2020. |
WP3.7 Low-surface-brightness science using LSST | Team member Aaron Watkins has been appointed as Deputy Chair of the LSST Low Surface Brightness Working Group. He is working alongside Sarah Brough from the University of New South Wales Australia to help coordinate international community effort in infrastructure development related to intra cluster light and dwarf galaxy science. This includes, although not restricted to, activity related to international LoI proposals. Aaron also gave an update of his WP 3.7 work at the LSB Session of the Rubin Project and Community Workshop in August. He presented results quantifying the over subtraction in different versions of the current data pipeline to an audience of well over 100 participants. Aaron has also given virtual seminars at LJMU and Hertfordshire and to the LSST Galaxies forum and the LSB Challenge 1 meeting, of which he is co-chair. |
WP3.9 LSST Point Spread Function, sensor characterisation and modelling | This WP team have established the following.
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WP3.10 UK Contributions to DESC Operations | Deliverable D3.10.5 “Processing DC2 data using the LSST DM Stack on UK Facilities, was completed. This deliverable describes how to process the images generated by DESC's Data Challenge 2 using the LSST software pipeline. Instructions for installing the software, setting up a data repository and running each stage of the pipeline are provided. Possibilities for using container and workflow technologies to improve the process are also discussed. |
WP3.11 Cross matching and astrometry at LSST depths | The WP team completed their first deliverable, D3.11.1, an investigation into the model for contamination of sources due to crowding at LSST depths. WP 3.11 are confident that they can model the astrometric perturbations and photometric contaminations of sources due to faint, blended objects within their PSFs and have algorithms in place that improve the accuracy of the simulated models across a wide range of signal-to-noise ratios, from bright, photon-dominated objects to (important for LSST) faint, sky background-dominated objects. In addition, this WP have started building the software framework for fully symmetric, many-to-many Bayesian cross-matches. This code will serve as the preliminary test bed for investigations in integrations with the DAC workflow, user interaction with the end products, profiling to LSST data sizes, and an analytic groundwork from which to probe reproducibility, recovery rates, etc. The WP are also are working with the LSST:UK DAC team to establish a “data challenge” with the preliminary codebase. This involves a full end-to-end test — using Gaia and WISE, with WISE serving as a proxy for LSST in sources-per-PSF space — to verify and test a full-scale DAC-DEV product creation. Finally, this WP have also begun discussions with various US-based teams — both the DM team within LSSTC itself, and science collaborations — on coordinating efforts on understanding the LSST datasets. Links have also been made with the TVS SC, with potential collaboration efforts on the cross-matching of LSST alerts in real-time, the SMWLV SC, focussing on the importance of our cross-match algorithms in crowded Milky Way fields, and the Crowded Field Task Force in the LSSTC DM, again linking the WP 3.11 cross-match expertise but also working with them to ensure that the WP 3.11 implementation uses as robust and precise a description of the LSST data processing as possible. |
LSST:UK leadership
Here’s a list of significant leadership positions held by members of the LSST:UK consortium in the project and international Science Collaborations. If you are aware of any corrections or additions please contact the LSST:UK Project Managers (George Beckett and Terry Sloan: lusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk)
D. Alonso: co-convenor of the DESC Large Scale Structure WG and member of DESC Council;
D. Alonso: member of the LSST DESC Membership Committee
M. Banerji: co-chair of the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration;
R. Bowler: co-chair of the SED fitting and Photometric Redshifts WG in the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration;
B. Burningham: co-chair of solar neighbourhood WG in Stars, Milky Way and Local Volume Science Collaboration (from summer 2017);
T. Collett: co-convenor of the LSST DESC Strong Lensing Working Group;
P. Hatfield: co-chair of the Galaxy Environment WG in the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration;
S. Kaviraj: co-chair of the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration (from Summer 2018);
S. Kaviraj: member of the Rubin Observatory LSST Contribution Evaluation Committee representing the Galaxies Science Collaboration (from Spring 2020);
B Leistedt: member of the LSST DESC Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Committee;
D. Leonard: member of the LSST DESC Publication Board and Collaboration Council;
C. Lintott: leads the LSST EPO development of Zooniverse as a citizen science platform;
J. Mullaney: Co-Chair of the Active Galactic Nuclei WG in the LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration;
M. Schwamb: co-chair of Solar System Science Collaboration (re-appointed May 2020);
M. Schwamb: member of the Rubin Observatory LSST Contribution Evaluation Committee representing the Solar System Science Collaboration (from Spring 2020);
S. Smartt: member of the LSST Science Advisory Committee (from 2018);
G. Smith: co-chair of the LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration;
M. Sullivan: co-chair of DESC Follow-up Task Force;
M. Sullivan: co-lead of the DESC External Synergies Analysis Working Group;
A. Verma: chair of the Strong Lensing Working Group in the Galaxies Science Collaboration;
A. Verma: a member of the Rubin Observatory LSST Contribution Evaluation Committee representing the Strong Lensing Science Collaboration (from Spring 2020);
A. Watkins: co-lead of the LSST LSB challenge 1: "How do LSST algorithms do at detecting LSB sources?" (from March 2020);
A. Watkins: co-chair of the low-surface-brightness working group within the LSST Galaxies Science collaboration (from Autumn 2020);
J. Zuntz: former outgoing co-lead of the DESC Weak Lensing working group, Leader of Lensing/Largescale structure cross-correlation project.
Recent LSST:UK outputs
LSST:UK has recently produced the following technical reports.
Title | Author | Description |
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