Introduction
Those with ideas for future newsletter items should contact the LSST:UK Project Managers (George Beckett and Terry Sloanlusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk), while everyone is encouraged to subscribe to the Rubin Observatory Digest for more general news from the US observatory team.
Call for Phase C DEV Work Packages
Appointment of the LSST:UK Education and Public Outreach Coordinator
Mike’s galaxy classifying machine has been put to other uses recently. Having learned through collaboration with citizen scientists to classify galaxies, it can be repurposed as a similarity search - give it one galaxy, and it will return those it thinks are similar. (You can try it for yourself at bit.ly/decals_similarity). This mode of working, where a researcher or a citizen scientist who has found something unusual can immediately search the data for other examples, illustrates a different form of human-machine collaboration likely to be useful in the Rubin era. It’s something already used to great effect by the Gravity Spy team, who have a dedicated team of citizen scientists sorting through and classifying sources of noise in the hyper-sensitive LIGO and VIRGO data. What works for gravitational waves may be useful for exploring the panoply of astrophysical sources hidden in the Rubin Observatory data.
Forthcoming meetings of interest
Several meetings of potential interest have been scheduled for the coming months. As well as the winter DESC sprint week (in week beginning 25th October), the Rubin Observatory has announced an LSST Survey Strategy Workshop during 16th–17th November (which will be held online). More details are expected in the coming weeks via the DESC Confluence site and the Rubin Observatory Community Forum, respectively.
Note that the current list of forthcoming meeting 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
Announcements
If you have significant announcements that are directly relevant to LSST:UK and would like to share the announcement in a future newsletter, please contact the LSST:UK project managers.