• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sprinting towards dark energy with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
• 3 Apply to become a UK-based Community Scientist
• 4 Junior Associates Network – November update
• 5 Future computing resources for LSST data analysis: AI for Science
• 6 New blog: Finding kilonovae with Lasair
• 7 Can you help to fine tune the alerts pipeline?
• 8 Art meets science at the UK IDAC
• 9 In the Spotlight – latest interviews
• 10 Forthcoming meetings of interest

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Introduction

The Rubin Operations Early Optimization Phase continues, with weekly progress updates being provided via the Community forum with tag early-ops-update. The report for 21 November includes a link to a presentation given to institutional representatives of the LSST Discovery Alliance that presents a detailed account of current system performance, the activities being undertaken to improve it and the process by which a decision will be taken to start the 10-year LSST. The figure to the right is taken from that presentation and show a visit on 30 October on which the delivered PSF was ~0.6 arcsec FWHM across the whole field of view, illustrating the presentation’s top-level take-home message - that Commissioning has demonstrated that the as-built system is capable of meeting the LSST spec, with the Early Optimization Phase being needed to ensure that it can do so reliably.

A major update to the Rubin Observatory Plans for an Early Science Program (RTN-011) now presents a consolidated record of the various announcements that have been made in the past few months regarding changes to Rubin plans, as well as a summary of what was achieved during Commissioning. One announcement in this version of RTN-011 that was new to me was the plan to release per-epoch Source catalogues along with the single-epoch Processed Visit Images (PVIs) from which they have been derived. That will happen from a date no earlier than April 2026 until the publication of Data Release 1, which will now be based on the first year of LSST data and which is now expected to appear in the first half of 2028. These Prompt Images and Source Catalogues will be released after the expiry of the 80-hour embargo period that will apply to all pixel data during Rubin Operations and it is currently planned that the catalogue will only be made available through the data butler, rather than in a queryable database; despite that limitation, this is a welcome development that will facilitate some extra science in the gap between Data Preview 2 and Data Release 1.

Many of you will have seen that the call for session proposals for NAM 2026 (20-24 July, in Birmingham) is now open. We will be responding to that call, and hope to know the outcome before the December/January Newsletter appears in late January, in which case it will include a call for volunteers to help organise our LSST:UK session(s) at NAM.

Finally, there is an RAS meeting on Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence applied to astronomy on 9 January that may be of interest to many consortium members. There is a call for abstracts open, with a deadline of 23.59 GMT on 8 December. The intention is to have short talks (7 min + 3 min Q&A) to give many people - especially early career researchers - the chance to speak.

 

@Bob Mann

 

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Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)

Sprinting towards dark energy with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

In early November, the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) in Cambridge was host to enthusiastic astronomers and cosmologists from around the UK, who gathered for a busy Sprint Week for the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC). Sprint Week is a yearly opportunity for LSST DESC members and friends to gather and work collaboratively on their science projects together, forming new connections and strengthening old ones.

For the first time, Sprint Week took place across two continents, with a second site at Princeton University in the US. The IoA site had a very good turnout (pictured right) of around 20 LSST DESC members from Cambridge and elsewhere in the UK, as well as one very dedicated sprinter from Japan! It was a very productive week, and particularly exciting this year as the attendees were able to get hands-on with the early Rubin Observatory data, which was released to the scientific community in June 2025 as part of Data Preview 1. The topics worked on ranged from modelling transient lightcurves and studying the properties of DP1 galaxies to upgrades on the LSST cosmology pipeline.

The meeting received generous support from LSST:UK and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge.

@Hiranya Peiris and Stephen Thorp

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Credit: Amanda Smith

 

Apply to become a UK-based Community Scientist

The first call for applications for UK-based Community Scientists (CS) is now open.

The deadline for applications is 15 December 2025. Full details of the roles and application process are available at the LSST:UK wiki here. 

These UK-based roles are funded at 0.5FTE and expected to last for 12 months. They are likely to suit individuals who are looking for a part-time role and/or have a postdoctoral position that can be extended in the light of this additional funded part-time role. 

The successful applicants will work as members of the Rubin Community Science Team (CST), led by Melissa Graham at the University of Washington. The CST supports the worldwide community of astronomers, scientists and students in their use of Rubin data products and services, as they produce scientific results from LSST. 

Informal discussions are welcome, and can be arranged by emailing Graham Smith: gps@star.sr.bham.ac.uk. This is the first round of what we intend to be a scheme running for the ten years of the LSST survey, subject to continued funding; future calls will be advertised in the Newsletter and on the lusc-announce email list.

@Graham Smith

Junior Associates Network – November update

Here are a couple of short updates about the newly-formed LSST:UK Junior Associates Network (JAN) – a network organised by junior associates for junior associates.

Since its launch a month ago, the JAN has accrued a total of 52 members! Thank you to all of those who have joined so far ­– we hope the JAN will be of some benefit to you all. If you are a Junior Associate and would like to join, then sign up to the mailing list by filling in this online form and following the instructions in the subsequent email.

In other news, we are hoping to begin a regular series of online seminars and tutorials, likely beginning next term. If you are in the JAN and would like to present your work, or if you would be willing to give a tutorial that you think would be beneficial to the JAN (e.g. how to use the Rubin Science Platform) then please get in touch by emailing t.cornish@imperial.ac.uk or cpennock@roe.ac.uk. More details on the format and schedule to follow.

That’s all for this month! More information on the JAN can be found on the Wiki, including details of the various Slack channels available to JANs in the LSST:UK workspace, and minutes from the meetings of the JAN leadership team.

@Thomas Cornish, Steve Ardern, @Garreth Martin, @Clara Pennock, Andres Ponte Perez, @James Robinson, @Matthew Temple, @Andrew Wilson, @Tom J Wilson

Future computing resources for LSST data analysis: AI for Science

UKRI have opened a long-running consultation - called ASCEND - that provides “an opportunity for the UK’s research and innovation communities to inform UKRI of their needs regarding Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI), thereby informing the DRI Programme’s future actions such as investments, opportunities and policies” and we are about to submit an initial response on behalf of LSST:UK. The ASCEND process will run until July 2029, so we anticipate making further submissions as our understanding of the Consortium’s demand for computing resources for LSST data analysis improves.

It is likely that much of UKRI’s future investment in DRI will focus on GPU-based systems supporting AI and machine learning analyses, building on the two AI Research Resource (AIRR) systems now running at Bristol and Cambridge. UKRI are offering several routes by which researchers in academia and industry can gain access to the AIRR systems, with the Gateway route the best suited to our community: it is intended for new users of such systems and/or those building towards a larger campaign on such a machine, which would suit those looking ahead to large-scale analyses of, say, LSST Data Release 1. Note also that there is a dedicated AI for Science call open now, with a deadline of 16.00 GMT on 21 December.

STFC are keen to ensure that the research communities they fund gain appropriate benefit from national DRI facilities funded through UKRI, so please let me know if you respond to any AIRR calls - whether your application is successful or not - so that I can keep STFC apprised of our engagement with the programme to aid their monitoring of the situation.

@Bob Mann

New blog: Finding kilonovae with Lasair

Can you help to fine tune the alerts pipeline?

With the Rubin Alert Pipeline expected to generate ten million alerts each night, sharp-eyed humans are being recruited to help improve the identification of astrophysical transients, variables, and moving objects.

The Rubin Alert Production team has built a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to go through the millions of detections and reject the bogus ones – now this machine learning classifier is in need of human eyes to further fine tune it. Rubin Difference Detectives is a Zooniverse project in which citizen scientists can classify images as real or bogus. More than 600 volunteers have signed up so far but many more are needed.

Please consider signing up for Rubin Difference Detectives and tell your friends and family too!

@Eleanor O'Kane

Art meets science at the UK IDAC

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A new mural at Somerville, which hosts the UK Independent Data Access Centre (IDAC), combines a portrait of Mary Somerville with one of Rubin’s First Look images. It was created by Aaron Ballantyne, a multimedia designer working at EPCC.

In the Spotlight – latest interviews

What does a particle physicist hope to get out of the Rubin LSST? Which cosmic event forges some of the heaviest elements in the periodic table?

These questions and more are answered in the latest In the Spotlight interviews. We caught up with Professor Jeff Tseng, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and Dimple, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. They tell us what it is about astronomy that captivates them, and what they’ve learned from working in LSST:UK so far.

The spotlights provide an insight into what the Rubin LSST holds for scientists in different areas of the project, a hint to the potential that the LSST offers.

Read all the In the Spotlight interviews on the LSST:UK website.

Want to take part? Simply fill in the webform.

 

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@Eleanor O'Kane

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.