LSST Data Preview and release schedule

Last update : April 7, 2025

Links to key documents

There are two documents relevant to data previews and releases :

Rubin Observatory Plans for an Early Science Program (Leanne Guy et al. RTN-011), latest version is dated February 24, 2025.

An Interim Report on the ComCam On-Sky Campaign (SITCOMTN-149), latest version is dated January 14, 2025.

An additional document was last updated February 10, 2023, and thus largely superseded by the above:

“Release Scenarios for Rubin - LSST Commissioning and Survey Data” (Phil Marshall et al. RDO-11).

For reference, full details of the Rubin/LSST data products are available from this document:

Data Products Definition Document (Mario Juric et al. LSE-163), latest version dated July 10, 2023.

Summary of timeline

Following successful commissioning observations with ComCam in late 2024, the schedule and content of Data Preview 1 has been firmed up, and the timeline with LSSTCam in 2025 has become clearer.

This high-level Gantt chart provides a data preview / release oriented overview (Table 5, RTN-011):

A further layer of detail (not much, but interesting nonetheless) is available from the Monthly Updates to the Construction Project Status: Monthly Updates

Summary of what to expect data-wise

The next data preview – DP1 – will include on-sky science-grade data from ComCam and is scheduled for June-July 2025, just after the “First look” media event (Table 1, RTN-11):

The ComCam data were obtained in the following fields (Table 2, RTN-11):

DP1 will contain ~2000 science observations, distributed between fields and filters (Table 3, RTN-11):

Typical delivered image quality in DP1, based on data release processing (DRP) in November 2024 (Table 4, SITCOMTN-149):

Summary of data products and alerts with LSSTCam during commissioning and year one of survey operations (Table 4, RTN-11; PP = Prompt Processing; SSP = Solar System Processing; PPDB = Prompt Products Database; DIA = Difference Image Analysis):