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We invite members of the UK community to propose value added contributions to the commissioning of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory as part of LSST:UK’s in-kind package. This call for proposals follows acceptance of the commissioning element of our in-kind proposal, and initiates the detailed development and approval of the UK’s commissioning team and plans. Our in-kind “recipient group”, namely Rubin’s System Integration Test and Commissioning (SITCOM) team, have identified on-summit support of wavefront sensor sub-system commissioning as a high priority, in addition to a wider team that analyses commissioning data remotely in part-time roles while based at their home institute. All such roles are envisaged as lasting 1-2 years during the 2022 and 2023 calendar years. Our in-kind proposal included 3 staff years of new STFC funding for UK commissioning contributions, split roughly 50-50 between our summit and remote teams. Given the limited funding, and the exciting nature of this opportunity, we anticipate that most members of the UK commissioning team will be unfunded, volunteering a fraction of their research time. Whilst we envisage most of the proposals submitted in reponse to this call will come from groups that submitted an Expression of Interest in 2020, this call is open to all Uk colleagues regardless of previous expression of interest. This call includes background information on the process followed to date, examples of value-added contributions sought by SITCOM, and details of the rights and responsibilities of SITCOM team members, including individuals who join through this call. This call for proposals is coordinated with the recent Announcement of Opportunity for Community Engagement with Rubin Observatory Commissioning Effort in the US and Chile, however UK colleagues are only eligible to respond this UK-specific call. The deadline for submission of UK proposals is Proposals in response to this UK-specific call must be prepared using this template, and submitted to lusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk before 5pm UTC September 15, 2021. Questions or concerns about this call for proposals may be directed to Graham Smith (gps@star.sr.bham.ac.uk) and Bob Mann (rgm@roe.ac.uk).
1. Overview and timeline
Colleagues are invited to submit proposals for contributions to Rubin Observatory commissioning as fully integrated members of Rubin's Systems Integration Test and Commissioning (SITCOM) team. Proposals are welcome from colleagues who seek new funding through this call, and also from colleagues who do not seek new funding. Given the significant opportunity to gain expertise with early data through this call and the limited new funding that is available, we anticipate that the amount of volunteer effort per person will be ~20-50% of an individual’s research time (i.e. modest fractional contributions are welcome and encouraged), and that the sum of the volunteer effort across the UK community may exceed the amount of funded effort.
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This call runs in parallel with a similar opportunity for the US and Chilean communities that is the focus of a separate Announcement of Opportunity (AO). UK colleagues may come across that AO through their involvement in their respective Science Collaborations. International partners are not eligible to apply through the US/Chile AO. This is because the US/Chile AO extends the opportunity to join SITCOM that has effectively been available to international partners through the in-kind process, and of which this UK call for proposals is part. Nevertheless, we are collaborating with US colleagues to ensure that the US/Chile AO and this UK call are synchronised and consistent to the extent possible and that makes sense. For example, the detailed information in Appendices 3 and 4 comes from the US/Chile AO.
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Proposal content and format
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Proposals should be 2 pages in length and should address the following topics under the following section headings. These headings and supporting comments are borrowed from prepared using this template and not exceed three pages in length. The topics that must be included in the proposal are described in the template, and closely follow the US/Chile AO in order to facilitate the joint review of the full UK proposal with SITCOM leadership in late 2021.
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In summary, the required information is as follows:
contact information for
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Statement of interests and proposed contributions.
Please be as specific as possible, indicating the specific area(s) from the set of example contributions listed in [Appendix 3]. Proposed contributions must correspond to one or more of the examples, or explicitly label the contribution as type “Other”. Plans to use private software that is not publicly released under an open source license must be specifically mentioned.
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Statement of core competencies and adaptability:
Please mention current and previous engagement with the Rubin Observatory Project and/or LSST Science Collaborations, experience with and/or contributions to the Rubin Science Pipelines, and familiarity with hardware and/or software components of the Rubin Observatory system. Please mention expertise, experience, prior work relevant to the specific intended area(s) of contribution.
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Summary of personnel involved.
For each individual, please include institution, career stage, FTE availability for Rubin commissioning related work in calendar years 2022 and 2023.
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Description of any support and resources available to each individual [in the completion of] their contributions and plans (e.g., salary/stipend, travel and local accommodation).
Note that analysis of commissioning data is expected to be done using Project computing resources.
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Description of any additional resources that are needed to fulfill your proposed contributions.
[LSST:UK has a total of 3 staff years of funding available from STFC to support commissioning contributions. Colleagues who are able to complete their proposed contribution to commissioning without additional funding are requested to note that in this section.]
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proposal leader(s);
details of the proposed contribution to commissioning;
previous relevant experience and engagement with LSST:UK, Rubin Project, and LSST Science Collaborations;
information about the proposed team members;
resources already in place and requests for new resources;
statement on equity, diversity and inclusion.
7. Evaluation criteria
Proposals from individual groups will be evaluated by a sub-committee of the LSST:UK Executive Group, on behalf of the LSST:UK Consortium Board. Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria, many of which are borrowed from the parallel US/Chile AO:
Alignment with the strategic priorities of the LSST:UK community, as defined by the LSST:UK Consortium Board.
Alignment of the proposed value-added contributions with Project goals to facilitate a smooth transition to LSST operations.
Capability of the individual or group to apply their domain expertise to efficiently complete the intended valued-added contributions to the commissioning effort.
Previous engagement with the Rubin Observatory Project and/or Rubin science community.
Previous experience with commissioning as well as technical and/or science validation of other instruments/facilities.
Financial and/or other relevant resources available to support the proposed contribution.
Contributions to the training and preparation of the next generation of observatory builders.
Commitment to include diverse staff.
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Proposal submission
Proposals should be emailed as a pdf file to lusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk before 5pm UTC, September 15 2021. Please include “Proposal for UK contribution to Rubin commissioning” in the subject line of your submission email. Safe receipt of each proposal will be acknowledged by email from Terry Sloan or George Beckett (LSST:UK Project Managers) following the submisison deadline. Colleagues are welcome to email Graham Smith (gps@star.sr.bham.ac.uk) and Bob Mann (rgm@roe.ac.uk) with any questions, ideas, or concerns.
Appendix 1: Summary of Expressions of Interest from UK colleagues
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The UK has a wealth of experience in commissioning wide-field survey instruments. Our recent call for expressions of interest yielded 23 expressions of interest led by colleagues at 15 different institutes, and covering the following topics:
Active optics: Will Sutherland (VISTA Project Scientist 2000-2009) and Gavin Dalton tested and debugged the active optics subsystems during VISTA commissioning. Early career colleagues are also keen to contribute on-summit, including both instrumentation postdocs with experience of commissioning instruments on wide-field and/or large telescopes, and students who have relevant experience from wide field surveys including the Dark Energy Survey (DES).
Data analysis: Eleven different UK groups (mostly embedded in LSST Science Collaborations) have technical expertise required to analyse commissioning data and correlate with telemetry and other observing parameters, including off-axis angle. For example, analysis of commissioning observations of strongly lensed quasars would test Rubin’s active optics performance, and has strong synergy with the UK’s VISTA-based expertise discussed above.
Visual inspection: Colleagues at the University of Sussex have expertise in visual inspection of commissioning data from the DES “eyeball squad”. Colleagues at the Open University have complementary expertise in crowd sourcing visual inspection using the Zooniverse platform.
Operational rehearsals: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit have expertise in designing and supporting "Operational Rehearsals” for the commissioning of wide-field survey instruments, including design of data quality checks. We envisage this being relevant to planning, testing and rehearsing Rubin’s nightly workflow in the latter stages of commissioning.
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All members of the Commissioning Team will follow the publication policies of the Rubin Observatory Project, including the Rubin Data Policy (RDO-13) and Rubin Project Publication policy (LPM-162) as they apply to commissioning data.
No papers presenting novel scientific results may be posted/submitted by anyone before the associated data release, which for commissioning data means the relevant Data Preview release date. The Project has authority to determine the classification of technical versus scientific papers prepared by members of the Commissioning Team. Rubin Observatory reserves the right to sanction Users who violate this policy, as described in the Rubin Data Policy (RDO-13).
The Project has planned a series of Rubin Observatory Construction Papers to describe the technical and scientific performance of the as-built system. The preparation of these papers follows the Rubin Project Publication policy. All members of the Commissioning Team are eligible to be co-authors on Rubin Observatory Construction Papers to which they contribute. The planned scope of the Construction Papers is limited to technical and scientific performance evaluation; the Construction Papers are not intended to present novel scientific results.
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