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Introduction
Construction milestones continue to be met on the summit of Cerro Pachón. The image on the right shows the successful outcome of the installation of the Top-End Assembly (TEA).
The Rubin Observatory has released a video on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOaS8jzkTMI - following the TEA installation, accompanied by suitably stirring music.
The Telescope Mount Assembly now just needs to have the camera mass surrogate installed and it will be complete, allowing a variety of tests before the eventual arrival of the camera itself.
(Credit: Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA)
Meanwhile, a milestone was reached in the camera construction, with the arrival at SLAC of the first filter, that for the r band (pictured right).
Each filter is almost 80cm in diameter and weighs about 40kg. Before arrival at SLAC for eventual integration into the camera, the filters each undergo a journey that takes them to France for the shaping and polishing of the substrate, followed by coating and installation in their individual frames at different locations in the US.
The remaining five filters - for the u, g, i, z and y bands - are due to arrive in SLAC in the next few months, after which all six will be loaded into the filter exchanger by the end of 2021. The camera is due to be shipped to Chile early in 2022.
(Credit: Travis Lange/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Finally, the Observatory has released another YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_VUIPwWAk - that summarises a decade of construction on Cerro Pachón in 80 seconds, to the accompaniment of a rather jauntier ditty than that chosen for the TEA installation video.
Those with ideas for future newsletter items should contact the LSST:UK Project Managers (George Beckett and Terry Sloanlusc_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.
LSST:UK All-Hands Meeting
The 2021 LSST:UK All-Hands Meeting will take place on on 11-13 May, with roughly two days' worth of sessions distributed across the three days, to help prevent Zoom-fatigue. Organising committees are now being set up, and they will issue a call for contributions soon, but the intention is to supplement more formal presentations with use of a tool like Gather to try and recreate online some of the more social aspects of a real conference. So, please mark those dates in your calendars, and watch out for further announcements on the lusc-announce email list.
2021 Mid-Year Junior Associates Selection Round
Preparations have begun for the mid-year call for Junior Associates. The timetable is still to be finalised, but we anticipate call being open during May, with new data-rights holders being appointed for July 2021. The call will be advertised via the LUSC-ANNOUNCE mailing list, and existing Junior Associates who are eligible to reapply being contacted directly.
More information on Rubin Observatory data rights can be found at LSST:UK Affiliate PIs and Junior Associates .
Update on the UK in-kind package
In the December/January newsletter, I reported that the full UK in-kind proposal had been submitted in November 2020. This was then reviewed by Rubin Observatory staff and by the Contribution Evaluation Committee, leading to the release of a feedback document on March 3rd. That feedback was very positive: of the fifteen individual contributions proposed for our in-kind package in November, six were “Accepted” and the remaining nine were “Accepted with modifications”, where the requested modifications were minor clarifications or corrections. An updated proposal, revised in the light of the feedback comments, was resubmitted on March 19th; it, and the feedback document, can be found linked from the Science Working Group home page on the wiki.
The Rubin staff are currently working their way through all the revised proposals submitted by all the #######
IRIS
LSST:UK sources all significant computing infrastructure that it requires from the STFC programme, IRIS, which offers three kinds of infrastructure:
Large-scale high-through computing and storage on grid infrastructure managed by GridPP [www.gridpp.ac.uk].
High-performance computing resources from DiRAC [www.dirac.ac.uk].
Cloud computing and storage [available from several IRIS member institutions].
Time and capacity on these different infrastructures is secured through an annually (April—March) Resource Scrutiny and Allocation Panel (RSAP). The RSAP treats LSST:UK as a single user and expects the consortium to formulate a single unified request to IRIS, late in each calendar year, based on the aggregated requirements of the LSST:UK members.
For LSST:UK, the DAC team is the point of contact with the RSAP. The DAC team has engaged successfully with the RSAP since its inception in late 2018 and has, at the time of writing, secured more than 25 million core hours of computing time and 2 Petabytes of working storage.
As well as applying for infrastructure on behalf of the Consortium, the DAC team also works with IRIS to ensure that the infrastructure procured by IRIS is relevant to LSST:UK’s needs. The DAC team maintains a five-year forecast of infrastructure requirements, which feeds into the IRIS Delivery Board’s provisioning plans, and highlights potentially demanding LSST:UK use cases to the IRIS Technical Working Group, to ensure that LSST:UK technology needs are considered when planning and provisioning new infrastructure.
Around October of each year, the DAC team requests details, from both the DEV activities and the wider UK Consortium, of forthcoming infrastructure requirements. Given the potential complexity of the infrastructure available, the DAC team works with DEV teams and other Consortium activities to understand and properly size their requirements, so that a coherent and strong bid for resources can be submitted to IRIS for the December deadline. As an allocation process (rather than an award process), it is common for the RSAP to engage with the DAC team during application preparation.
In November 2020, LSST:UK finalised its request for computing time in the period April 2021—March 2022, which has now been approved as follows:
Application (Team) | Compute Time Awarded (Million core hours) | Storage Awarded (PB) |
|---|---|---|
Lasair (UK Community Broker for ZTF) | 0.4 | 0.05 |
DESC DC2/ DC3 Simulations | 1 | 0.5 |
LSST Pipeline Processing | 2 | 0.3 |
If you are interested to learn more about the capabilities of IRIS, and if you think your LSST:UK-related research would benefit from access to IRIS infrastructure, please contact George Beckett.
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Recent LSST:UK outputs
LSST:UK has recently produced the following technical reports.
Title | Author | Description |
|---|---|---|
Tom Wilson, Tim Naylor, George Beckett, Mike Read | LSST:UK Work Package 3.11 is mainly tasked with the creation of new software to enable more robust cross-matches of LSST and other catalogues, including the effects of position perturbation from blended objects. These matches will then be hosted on the UKDAC, accessible to users. This deliverable D3.11.2 comprises software that provides an end-to-end complete cross-match. This software is installable by the end user and includes documentation. The deliverable also includes a description of the draft interface document between the WP3.11 software and the UKDAC. |
Forthcoming meetings of interest
The global pandemic has led to almost all face-to-face meetings being cancelled. However, in light of continued restrictions on travel, Rubin Observatory business has moved online and we aim to maintain a list of relevant/ interesting upcoming meetings on our Confluence site. Of particular note, there are three meetings planned for the near future:
The Rubin Observatory Project and Community Workshop has been confirmed to be a virtual meeting which will run during 9th–13th August 2021. More details to follow.
The next DESC Virtual Collaboration Meeting has been confirmed for 19th–23rd July 2021. DESC members may find out more from DESC site (login required).
During 7th--10th June, Penn State University will virtually host the Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy VII. More information at meeting website.
Notice of upcoming maintenance for LSST:UK Confluence site
Atlassian has advised that our Confluence site will be offline for up to six hours, from midnight on 11th April, to migrate to new and upgraded hosting. Hopefully no-one is planning to work late night on a Saturday night/ Sunday morning, but just in case!
