Introduction

Construction activities on Cerro Pachón continue to ramp up, with significant progress being made on the dome and the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA).

The picture on the right shows work in progress on dome cladding and louvres, while, inside the dome, preparation is being made for the imminent arrival of the top-end of the TMA. Its assembly will require the services of a 500-ton crane, which, itself, is currently being assembled on the summit.

Credit: Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA

Meanwhile, observations with the Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel) have recommenced, after a ten-month break, with a three-night run during January. AuxTel’s role during survey operations is to monitor atmospheric transmission above Cerro Pachón, but these early runs allow testing of a variety of communications, networking and data reduction systems prior to the start of commissioning observations with the Simonyi Survey Telescope itself.

The image to the right was taken during that run and shows a spectrum of a spectral standard star, near the centre of the image; the star to its left appears elongated because it is a close binary.

Credit: Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA

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.

Bob Mann

IRIS

George Beckett

Summary of the 11th LSST:UK Consortium Board Meeting

Mike Watson

Community input sought on survey strategy, photometric redshifts and joint LSST-Euclid derived data products

As many of those most interested will already have heard through their Science Collaborations, the Rubin Observatory is currently soliciting input from the community on three important issues, namely survey strategy, photometric redshift estimators and joint LSST-Euclid data products.

Survey strategy. The optimisation of survey strategy has been a multi-year process, currently overseen by a Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC), which includes LSST:UK members Hiranya Peiris and Meg Schwamb. In December 2020, SCOC issued a call for Cadence Notes, which would record the opinions of different portions of the Rubin community on a number of questions relating to the specification of the observing strategy for the survey, based on analyses of the most recent set of survey simulations. The SCOC has recently announced an extension of the submission deadline for Cadence Notes (to 15 April 2021), along with further clarifications of what should be submitted. More general information about the survey strategy optimisation process can be found on the SCOC webpages.
Photometric redshift estimators. The Rubin Data Management (DM) team issued A Roadmap to Photometric Redshifts for LSST Data Releases at the start of February, as part of which it is running two sets of monthly Photo-z Virtual Forums to gather community input to inform the selection of the photo-z estimator(s) to be used in the production of the data release catalogues. The first set, running from February to April, will define the evaluation criteria to be used in assessing photo-z estimator, with the second set (May-July) will focus on the development of the Letters of Recommendation (due by 30 September 2021) through which the community can influence the DM team’s selection of short-list of photo-z estimators.
LSST-Euclid derived data products.