LSST:UK newsletter 55 – May 2025
Introduction
As the image on the right shows, Rubin have now announced the date – 23 June – on which they will release the First Look images. Several groups in the UK are already planning a Watch Party to follow the livestream of the First Look press conference in the US; @Eleanor O'Kane explains below what that will entail and will provide.
UK media interest in Rubin and the LSST is growing as we approach the start of survey operations and @Eleanor O'Kane is building a list of those willing to talk to the media. Please contact her (eokane@roe.ac.uk) if you would like to be added to that list now or would like to receive training that would facilitate later engagement with the media; we’re keen that people from a wide range of science areas, institutions and career stages can take up these opportunities.
Meanwhile, Rubin Commissioning continues apace, with weekly updates being posted on the Community forum. No system as large and complex as this gets commissioned without some problems arising, but the very successful on-sky campaign conducted with ComCam at the end of last year has simplified the start of observing with LSSTCam. Recent commissioning activities have included the use of the Collimated Beam Projector to measure the quantum efficiencies of all the LSSTCam detectors (and the crosstalk between them) and continued commissioning of the many modes of the Active Optics System.
The Rubin Education and Public Outreach team have recently published an ‘Introduction to the Rubin Observatory’ slide deck that can be used by those giving public talks, while some of the graphics and embedded videos could also be useful for talks aimed at a professional audience. A link to the slide deck can also be found at ls.st/resources.
We are still putting the final touches to the programmes for our sessions at NAM2025 at Durham (right), but there will be three of them: a pair of parallel sessions on Monday, 7 July (16.15-17.45) and Tuesday, 8 July (14.15-15.45), plus, on the Tuesday, a lunchtime session (13.15-14.00), entitled LSST and LSST:UK for Early Career Researchers, which will include a discussion of plans for our Junior Associates network.
@Bob Mann
Lasair version 7 is live
The Lasair team is full of anxiety and excitement. The journey is finally about to begin, when Rubin alerts start flowing at the end of 2025. Imagine you are embarking on a solo hike across a continent, but you have never been there before – this is how it feels in the weeks before departure!
Lasair version 7 is now released: essentially the same as it will be for the Rubin alerts, but with fake data to drive it. A lot is new, and there have been a lot of tests, but you never really know until the journey actually begins – when the astronomers of the world see new and exciting data has arrived, and they consider Lasair as one of several possible brokers.
On the user-facing side, Lasair has new features designed for six-band light curves and LSST cadence. These include a two-dimensional parametric fit combining explosion and black body temperature; finding paired detections 30 minutes apart to get colour; and a jump detector to find sudden changes in flux. There is support for multimessenger events like gravitational wave detection. The Sherlock crossmatcher has huge new catalogues of the Southern sky. There are a lot of new documentation, video, notebooks, and community resources, but we won't know if it aligns with user requirements until real people come aboard.
It’s a lot of date to store and process – and it only takes one bottleneck to kneecap the pipeline.
The data rate and volume of Rubin has always been frightening – millions of alerts each night, each alert with images and hundreds of attributes and hundreds of extra packets, each of those with a hundred attributes. The Lasair team has been part of Rubin's Operation Rehearsals, and has done a lot of optimisation of the databases and the cloud deployment. However it's a lot of data to store and process – and it only takes one bottleneck to kneecap the pipeline. Furthermore, Lasair allows users to insert their own filters and geometry into the real-time pipeline, so we need to watch that aspect carefully for excessive, or even malicious usage.
The bright spot in all this is the small but dedicated team. All of us have put ourselves into Lasair with unfailing energy and dedication over many years, and will give our all to the transition from development to production.
@Roy Williams
Multi-messenger gravitational lensing in focus
Published on 1 May, Multi-messenger gravitational lensing Part 2 is the second part of a specially themed issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, co-edited by Federica Bianco, @Martin Hendryand @Graham Smith.
The issue, as well as the Theo Murphy Meeting to which it relates, address the exciting scientific opportunities of the next five-to-ten years at the interface between multi-messenger astronomy and gravitational lensing. These opportunities span many novel experiments that will make ground-breaking contributions to big open questions in fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics.
View Multi-messenger gravitational lensing (Part 2)
You can also the first part of the issue: Multi-messenger gravitational lensing (Part 1).
LSST:UK on BBC Tech Now
Watch the episode on BBC iPlayer now (feature starts at 7.00): https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002c74s/tech-now-supercomputers-solving-the-big-problems
@Eleanor O'Kane
Relaunch of LSST:UK website
The LSST:UK website has been relaunched with a fresh new look and additional content.
In addition to the science section (formerly containing the ‘science spotlight’ features), the website now has a section highlighting the data processing and management contribution by LSST:UK. The existing science features are being updated – get in touch with @Eleanor O'Kane if you would like to suggest an article for the science or technology sections – or indeed the news section.
We’ll be adding the LSST:UK in the Spotlight interviews to the website in the near future. If you've yet to take part, all you need to do is answer a few questions on this webform about your journey into LSST:UK. It’s fun, not too taxing, and will help us inspire others to consider a career in STEM.
Fill in the LSST:UK in the Spotlight webform or contact Eleanor O’Kane (mailto:eokane@roe.ac.uk) to submit a news item or article idea.
@Eleanor O'Kane
First Look news
The eagerly awaited release of Rubin First Look images will take place on 23 June at 4pm (UK time).
Celebrate with a Watch Party
Partner institutions and other groups are being invited to host Rubin First Look Watch Parties to coincide with the unveiling of the images. These will be in-person events during which organisers. can hold talks and other activities in addition to streaming the First Look unveiling. The Watch Parties can be private or public; plans are already underway in several LSST:UK institutions and public venues around the UK.
Sign up to host a Watch Party and you will receive access to materials and information needed for hosting. Organiser materials include access to the Rubin First Look unveiling event live stream and a library of Rubin media content. Some of the materials will be embargoed until shortly before the event.
Find out more and register for a Watch Party: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/rubin-party
Press activity and support for First Look
The LSST:UK team will be issuing a press release and we encourage LSST:UK institutions to use First Look as an opportunity to highlight the role their staff are playing in LSST:UK and Rubin. Please get in touch with @Eleanor O'Kane to find out more and to co-ordinate on forthcoming press activity.
@Eleanor O'Kane
LSST:UK Fantasy Premier League 2024/25
Fantasy mirrored reality in the LSST:UK Fantasy Premier League this season. Terry “Liverpool” Sloan took an early lead, and held on to it from the autumn through to the end of the season, to gain a well-deserved victory. Chris “City” Frohmaier, who has been the dominant force over recent years, was, sadly, not able to maintain the impressively high standards of previous seasons and came third, beaten by Bob “Arsenal” Mann, who had some good weeks, but couldn’t match Liverpool’s quality week in, week out over the full season. Strong performances from @Daniel Pizarro, @Eleanor O'Kane, Klaas Wiersema and @William Lucas showed that the league as a whole is in good health, and we look forward to the start of the 2025/26 season.
If you would like to join the LSST:UK Fantasy Premier League for the 2025/26 season, keep an eye out for an announcement in a Newsletter later in the summer, and please let us know if there are other social activities that we can foster across LSST:UK through the Newsletter, as we know that fantasy football will not be to everyone’s taste.
@Bob Mann
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
23/Jun/25—27/Jun/25 | European Astronomical Society (inc. special session on Rubin Observatory engagement) | Cork, Ireland | |
14/Jul/25–17/Jul/25 | Supermassive Black Hole Studies in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time | Durham University, UK | |
21/Jul/25—25/Jul/25 | DESC Collaboration Meeting | https://lsstdesc.org/ (login required) | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign / Online |
21/Jul/25—25/Jul/25 | Summer School: Astronomy Data Science in the LSST Era | University of Minnesota, USA | |
28/Jul/25—01/Aug/25 | Rubin Community Workshop | Marriott University Park, Tucson, AZ | |
15/Sep/25–19/Sep/25 | LSST@Europe7 | Poznań, 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 https://lsst-uk.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HOME/pages/52424060
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