LSST:UK Newsletter 53 (March 2025)

LSST:UK Newsletter 53 (March 2025)

Introduction

The main news from the summit this month is that, following final testing and cleaning, LSSTCam has been mounted on the telescope: this is shown in the photo to the right, with many more linked from the NSF-DOE press release to mark the occasion. The final stages of in situ testing now begins, leading up the taking of the First Look images, which will be released in June or July at a major press event in the US. Our Communications Officer, @Eleanor O'Kane, is liaising with the Rubin comms team, in readiness to support LSST:UK consortium institutions who wish to make institutional press or news releases to coincide with First Look. Eleanor will have more to say on this as the plans take shape over the next few months, but feel free to contact her now if you think you would want to be involved in that.

The Rubin Community Science Team is currently running a series of science preparation seminars, describing how to access LSST data products through the Rubin Science Platform. There are seven seminars – one for each of the Science Collaborations (excepting Informatics and Statistics) – and, while the core material will be the same each time, the discussion will be tailored each week to the relevant Collaboration.

Finally, a reminder that the deadline for abstract submission for the LSST:UK sessions at NAM2025 is 13.00 on Monday 31 March. As described by @Graham Smith in recent mailings to the lusc-announce and STFC Astrocommunity lists and outlined on the NAM2025 website, we have a parallel session entitled Enabling early science with Rubin LSST in 2025 and a special lunchtime session describing LSST and LSST:UK for Early Career Researchers. We warmly encourage submissions for both sessions, with the parallel session providing Early Career Researchers, in particular, with an ideal opportunity to present their plans for early LSST science.

noirlab2511a.jpg
(RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/B. Quint)

@Bob Mann

 


Forthcoming LSST:UK Elections

The next few months will see the end of the current terms of @Kathy Romer, @Richard McMahon and @Cosimo Inserra on the Executive Group. So, we shall be holding elections for three Exec Group slots, although, the incumbents can stand for re-election.

The Exec Group members are also elected by the Board, but anyone in the LSST:UK Consortium is eligible to stand for election (with the exception of Work Package Leaders in the STFC-funded LSST:UK Science Centre programme). A separate email will be sent out on the lusc-announce list in mid-April to solicit (self-)nominations for the Exec Group posts and to give the timescale for the election process, but this is an informal heads-up to all Consortium members to think about whether they would consider standing for the Exec or suggesting to others that they should; the Consortium Board is particularly keen to see candidates who would increase the diversity of the LSST:UK leadership.

FIND OUT MORE

A formal description of the role of the Exec Group in contained in the Consortium’s governance document, while informal enquires as to what the role entails in practice can be directed to either @Bob Mann or @Terry Sloan .

@Bob Mann and @Terry Sloan


AGN experts to tackle LSST topics in July workshop

In July, the LSST Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) Science Collaboration is holding the workshop Supermassive Black Hole Studies in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. The deadline for abstract submission for contributed talks, and proposing topics for discussion and/or collaborative work is Friday 4 April.

With Rubin-LSST due to probe deeper than any previous wide-field time-domain survey in astronomy, giving 6-band multi-colour light-curves for every active galactic nucleus (AGN) in the southern sky, the workshop will address some timely open questions:

  • How to identify AGN using a combination of photometry, astrometry, variability and morphology information from LSST? 

  • How best to quantify the large amount of AGN variability data from LSST? 

  • How to use that information to yield new insights into SMBH accretion physics, demographics, and host-galaxy connections?

Motivated by these challenges, this workshop is bringing together AGN experts to present their ongoing work related to LSST and foster new collaborative projects to develop methods for AGN selection, classification and variability analyses. The programme will also equip early-career researchers (ECRs) with the skills to access and exploit the upcoming LSST data, and provide career-enhancing networking opportunities. There will be a mixed programme of presentations, discussion and collaborative hackathon-style sessions. Where possible, remote hybrid attendance will be enabled.

HOW TO REGISTER / SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

  • The workshop takes place on 14-17 July 2025 at Durham University. Anyone who wishes to attend and / or submit an abstract or proposal for a topic for discussion and/or collaborative work should complete this form by Friday 4 April 2025. As there is a limit of ~65 in-person participants, please complete the form to register, even if you don't wish to present at the event.

Matthew Temple


LSST:UK Travel support for Rubin Community Workshop 2025, DESC Collaboration Meeting, and LSST@Europe 7

There are three significant Rubin / LSST conferences in the summer, which may attract significant LSST:UK interest. These are:

To help manage potential demand for LSST:UK Pool Travel funding, we are running time-limited calls for all three of these events.

Applications for support to attend the DESC Collaboration Meeting and/ or the Rubin Community Workshop, and the LSST@Europe 7 meeting should be submitted by 4pm UK time on Friday 2 May. (Note that we assume the DESC Collaboration Meeting has been scheduled to align with the Rubin Community Workshop and will consider applicants from people wishing to attend both.)

Details of how to apply for LSST:UK Pool Travel funding are available on Confluence.

We will aim to confirm the outcome of applications by the end of 9 May.

It will be possible to apply for funding for these conferences after the deadline, though applications will only be considered if there is budget available.

Please let @George Beckett know if you have any questions or comments.

@George Beckett


Rubin Media Kit published

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Communications Office has launched a media kit for everyone who wants to explain the project clearly and engagingly. This comprehensive guide to all things Rubin-related lays out the project’s timeline, its science aims, and the technology that makes Rubin so groundbreaking.

It’s an essential resource when communicating the project to peers, the public or the media.

A reminder for anyone looking to learn the basics of science communication that the LSST:UK training video Science communication for early career researchers is available to view at your leisure. At 45 minutes in length, it provides an introduction to capturing the attention of press officers, colleagues and the general public when talking all things science and technology.

Rubnin media kit.png

Recent LSST:UK Science Centre outputs

The LSST:UK Science Centre has recently produced the following technical reports.

ID

Title

Author(s)

Description

ID

Title

Author(s)

Description

LUSC-C-17

D3.6.1 Adler 1.0 release

M. Schwamb, C Snodgrass, C. Opitom, J. Robinson, S. Merritt

This deliverable is concerned with development of core photometric small body functions for analysing Solar System alert data from the simulated 10 year Data Preview available on the Rubin Science Platform.

Using the LINCC-Frameworks python package template the core structure of the Adler package has been developed. The code is divided primarily into data handling (src/adler/dataclasses) and science functions (src/adler/science) with the intention of making tools suitable for multiple use cases, including a CLI.

LUSC-C-23

D3.7.1: System to ingest LSST targets into 4MOST OBs

C. Frohmaier, M. Sullivan

This deliverable presents a web-based tool to enable the manual upload of targets into the 4MOST system. In a previous deliverable (LUSC-B-43), we produced a tool that enabled the automatic ingestion of targets from Kafka data streams e.g. from the Lasair broker. This automatic process, however, is not suitable for all stakeholders in TiDES. For example, the strongly-lensed galaxies sub-survey (4SLSLS) will want to bulk upload their targets into 4MOST once they have assembled a catalogue of lensed galaxies discovered by Euclid and LSST. This web-tool is the mechanism by which an authorised TiDES members can upload targets into 4MOST.

@Terry Sloan


Forthcoming meetings of interest

Dates, locations and links… The current list of forthcoming meetings is always available on the Relevant Meetings page. You may also wish to check information held on the LSST organisation website LSST-organised events and the LSST Corporation website.

Dates

Meeting Title / Event

Meeting Website/ Contact

Meeting location / venue

Dates

Meeting Title / Event

Meeting Website/ Contact

Meeting location / venue

23/Jun/25–27/Jun/25

European Astronomical Society (inc. special session on Rubin Observatory engagement)

eas.unige.ch/EAS_meeting/session.jsp?id=SS5

Cork, Ireland

14/Jul/25–17/Jul/25

Supermassive Black Hole Studies in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (see news story in this issue)

https://agn.science.lsst.org/meeting2025

Durham University, UK

21/Jul/25–25/Jul/25

DESC Collaboration Meeting

https://lsstdesc.org/ (login required)

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign / Online

28/Jul/25–01/Aug/25

Rubin Community Workshop

https://project.lsst.org/meetings/rubin2025/rubin-observatory-community-workshop

Marriott University Park, Tucson, AZ

15/Sep/25–19/Sep/25

LSST@Europe7

https://lsst-europe7.syskonf.pl/

Poznan, Poland

Members of the Consortium (not in receipt of travel funding through one of the Science Centre grants) may apply for travel support for meetings of this kind via the LSST:UK Pool Travel Fund. Details are available at Forthcoming LSST-related Meetings . Please note there is a news item above regarding travel grants for three of the meetings detailed here.


If you have significant news or announcements that are directly relevant to LSST:UK and would like to share them in a future newsletter, contact @Eleanor O'Kane (email eokane@roe.ac.uk)

If you require this document in an alternative format, please contact the LSST:UK Project Managers lusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk or phone +44 131 651 3577