Introduction
Recent construction work on the summit of Cerro Pachón has included the installation on the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) of a small instrument called the StarTracker (shown right). This comprises a pair of digital cameras with telephoto lenses, and will be used during Commissioning to re-verify the pointing performance of the TMA (which had previously been verified back in the factory in Spain).
Closer to home, UK involvement in LSST passed a major administrative milestone with its being approved by the Projects and Investments Committee (PIC) of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The total cost of UK involvement exceeds STFC’s delegated budgetary authority, so it needs approval from UKRI’s parent government department, BEIS, to award our future funding - and, hence, before it can sign our Data Rights Agreement. That approval is provided in response to successful review of a business case that sets out the economic benefits to “UK plc” of the project, as well as its potential scientific and educational return.
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 membership of DESC Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee
The DESC is currently seeking volunteers or nominations for the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee. We are seeking to expand our pool of candidates in order to ensure broad representation on this committee. Time spent working on these committees is service to the collaboration, and counts toward achieving DESC builder status.
If you would like to nominate a member to the committee - or have any questions about this role - please contact Sierra Villarreal (sierrav@slac.stanford.edu), while if you would like to volunteer for any DESC committee (including EDI), please fill out the volunteer questionnaire at https://forms.gle/YyW7nVMRypJ4b4cN8.
The deadline for receiving nominations is Wednesday, December 7th.
Sierra Villarreal, on behalf of the DESC Collaboration Council
Call for LSST:UK Affiliate PIs and Junior Associates
Final call for Data Preview 0 Delegates
Forthcoming meetings of interest
Meetings of potential interest for the coming months include:
27th February – 3rd March – DESC Collaboration Meeting (virtual). Details to be published on DESC members website (login required).
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 the LSST:UK Pool Travel Fund. Details are available at Forthcoming LSST-related Meetings .
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.