Introduction to the Rubin Science Platform

Many of the astrophysical insights that the LSST will provide will stem directly from the sheer volume of data delivered by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. In many cases it will be impractical, if not impossible, to download and locally process the large amounts of data that will deliver the most groundbreaking research. With this in mind, the Rubin project will instead employ a “bring-your-code-to-the-data” model, whereby most data remains and is analysed within the Data Access Centres via the Rubin Science Platform (RSP).

Since most LSST data analysis will not be performed locally on one’s own filesystem and data formats, users will first need to become familiar with the RSP. While the learning curve is not especially steep, there are a number of concepts that are likely to be unfamiliar to many researchers when they start accessing LSST data products. With this in mind, James Mullaney from the University of Sheffield is running a number of sessions for UK-based astronomers which will introduce the Rubin Science Platform and demonstrate some of its features.

In response to the expressions of interest, a number of institutes around the UK have been identified as being well-located to host a session. There is roughly one location per region, and attempts have been made to select institutes in such a way that minimises total travel time for all of those that expressed an interest. Further, it is expected that most people who have expressed an interest are within roughly one hour’s train journey from at least one session. The chosen locations are outlined in the table below (ordered according to date):

Location	Date	Time (for transport bookings)	Serving¹ (indicative)

Location	Date	Time (for transport bookings)	Serving¹ (indicative)
U. of Nottingham	17 Jan 2024	11am-4pm² (Note different start time to other sessions)	Nottingham, Birmingham, Leicester, Warwick, Keele
U. of Oxford	22 Jan 2024	1pm-5pm	Oxford, Hertfordshire, OU
U. of Portsmouth	24 Jan 2024	1pm-5pm	Portsmouth, Southampton, Sussex*
U. of Surrey	25 Jan 2024	1pm-5pm	London universities, Sussex*
U. of Cambridge	TBC³		Cambridge
U. of Bath	21 Feb 2024	1pm-5pm	Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, Exeter
Queen’s Belfast	29 Feb 2024	1pm-5pm	Belfast, Armagh
Durham University	14 March 2024	1pm-5pm	Durham, Newcastle
U. of Edinburgh	15 March 2024	12pm-5pm² (Note different start time to the other sessions)	Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews
Lancaster University	20 March 2024	1pm-5pm	Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, UCLAN
Online⁴	TBC		N/A
Notes: ¹Booked room sizes are based on our expectation that most people will attend their nearest session (see the “Serving” column), but small numbers may attend other sessions. If the latter’s the case for you, please contact me to make sure there will be space. ²Nottingham’s and Edinburgh’s sessions include a lunch break (lunch not provided!) ³I’m actively liaising with Cambridge to settle on a date. ⁴ The online session will happen after all the in-person sessions have taken place. In-person attendance is, however, preferred in order to aide discussion and feeding-back desires for the RSP.

Detailed information regarding precise locations (room numbers and how-to-get-there instructions) will be added to this page over the coming weeks.

What to expect

Each session will consist of three hour-long lectures, separated by breaks. A small amount of time will be dedicated to giving a brief introduction to the the Vera C. Rubin project, the LSST, and key RSP concepts and terminology. The remainder of the time will be spent giving demonstrations of potential use cases. These will involve going through Python code – typically in the form of Jupyter Notebooks – which demonstrate possible use cases. The aims of the sessions are to:

familiarise people with the RSP environment;
introduce key concepts within the RSP;
demonstrate how to find out what data is held within the RSP;
demonstrate what can be done within the RSP.

My hope is that people will leave the sessions with at least a sense of how they could achieve X within the RSP (where X is some kind of data retrieval or analysis related to their scientific area of interest).

Topics that will be covered include:

how to determine what types of data (exposures, coadds, detection tables, etc) is held within the RSP;
how to determine what data of a given type is present in the RSP (i.e., a coadd covering this patch of sky);
what the Table Access Protocol and Data Butler are, and how to use them;
how to retrieve table data and pixel-level data;
retrieving static and time-series data;

but if there are other topics that you think would be particularly useful for you or your group, then I am open to suggestions; just drop me an email at j.mullaney@sheffield.ac.uk .

Finally, as well as being information delivery sessions, it’s also hoped that once people have been introduced to the RSP, then these sessions will also provide a means for the UK community to feed back what they hope to get from the RSP.