Last update : 19th February 2023
There are two documents relevant to data previews and releases :
Rubin Observatory Plans for an Early Science Program (Leanne Guy et al. RTN-11), latest version is dated 10th Feb 2023.
“Release Scenarios for Rubin - LSST Commissioning and Survey Data” (Phil Marshall et al. RDO-11) latest version is dated 7th August 2022. This is now well out of data and redundant, until a new version is released, we should focus on the Guy et al. RTN-11 document.
On 23rd November 2022, the project released an important update on the Construction Plan. On-sky data with ComCam will NOT be taken, and the project is planning on installing LSSTCam on the telescope earlier than in the assembly sequence. The projected start of operations of October 2024 has not changed. It is anticipated that LSSTCam will now be ready to take on-sky data at the time when ComCam was due to do so (end of 2023, although that needs confirmed). The DP1 and DP2 plans have changed.This is generally good news as on-sky commissioning with ComCam will be replaced with on-sky commissioning with LSSTCam.
Guy et al. RTN-11 Table 1:
System First Light : a milestone that marks the end of the on-sky engineering phase
System optimisation and Science Validation phase : a period of about 4 months after System First Light
Start of LSST Science operations : projected about 4 months after System First Light and after the Science Validation phase has been successfully completed
In the above schedule, DP1 (the first real LSSTCam data products)
Data release dates and observation coverage
There was a full 10 year approximate data release schedule in Marshall et al. RDO-11, but since this has been superseded with the schedule outlined in Guy et al., it has been removed from this page. The schedule from the new and updated version of RDO-11 (expected soon in 2023) will be summarised here when available.
Details of what will be included in the various data releases
As noted above DP1 and DP2 will be revised such that there will be no on-sky data with ComCam, and the project will move more quickly to LSSTCam on-sky data. A revised Marshall et al. document all be released in 2023. I have deleted the previous schedule which was posted here and we are awaiting a new version of RDO-11.