• 1 Introduction
• 2 Forthcoming LSST:UK Elections
• 3 AGN experts to tackle LSST topics in July workshop
• 4 LSST:UK Travel support for Rubin Community Workshop 2025, DESC Collaboration Meeting, and LSST@Europe 7
• 5 Rubin Media Kit published
• 6 Recent LSST:UK Science Centre outputs
• 7 Forthcoming meetings of interest

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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.

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

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.

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.

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:

• The DESC Collaboration Meeting (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign/ Virtual, 21-25 July) - https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/spaces/LSSTDESC/pages/124847131/Home (DESC Login required)

• The Rubin Community Workshop (Tucson, Arizona/ Virtual, 28 July-1 August) - https://project.lsst.org/meetings/rubin2025/rubin-observatory-community-workshop

• LSST@Europe 7 (Posnan, Poland/ Virtual, 15-19 September) - https://lsst-europe7.syskonf.pl/

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

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.

Access the Rubin Media Kit

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.

Watch Science communications for early career researchers

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Recent LSST:UK Science Centre outputs

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

@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.