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Name and contact information for the group leader.
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.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.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.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.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.]Rubin is committed to providing opportunities for diverse and traditionally under represented groups.
Please indicate how your proposed contribution will align with this commitment, for example, intent to provide training experience to early career scientists, a staffing profile that will contribute to the diversity of the Commissioning Team, and/or how an inclusive workplace culture will be implemented.
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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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