Project & Science News

This issue of the News Digest will be the last for 2021; look for the next issue in mid-January. Season’s greetings and best wishes for the New Year! 

Catch up with Rubin Observatory at the American Astronomical Society Win...

If you have ever wondered what it’s like to be an astronomer observing the Universe with one of the most powerful astronomical cameras ever built, now is your chance to find out. On Monday 6 December 2021 NSF’s NOIRLab will partner with universities an...

NOIRLab, in conjunction with the University of Hawai‘i’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) and the Maunakea Observatories (MKOs), shared the Universe with learners of all ages at Astroday Kona on Sunday 14 November 2021. The free, open-air event, organized...

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory team that’s developing the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera for Vera C. Rubin Observatory celebrated a very cold day during the last week of October — not because of the weather, but because both of...

The Project Director of the US Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP), Sidney Wolff, has announced her retirement, leaving behind a legacy of nearly fifty years leading the United States’s top ground-based observatories. 

Stepping up as the new P...

Project & Science News

Rubin Observatory will host an exhibit booth at the American Astronomical Society Winter Meeting (AAS239), to be held January 9-13, 2022, in Salt Lake City, UT. There is also a Rubin Observatory Open House scheduled during t...

Janice Lee, a member of the international PHANGS collaboration, has been recognized by the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards, presented at the 2021 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analy...

NSF’s NOIRLab is presenting about the importance of clear and dark skies at a virtual event named “Chilean Astronomy: A window to the Universe”, organized by the Chilean Embassy in Singapore in partnership with the Science Centre Singapore. 

The four-...

Monday 8 November to Friday 12 November 2021 sees the tenth version of Viaje al Universo, one of the education programs that NSF’s NOIRLab organizes in Chile to bring the wonders of the Universe to students, teachers and families.

Although all the act...

The decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics is a powerful study that our community uses to drive strategy and vision for the next decade of federally funded transformative science. The 2020 report, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophys...

As COVID-19 continues to spread globally, NOIRLab is actively responding to the situation and taking measures to ensure the safety of its staff and the public. We are currently not hosting visitors to the summit or base facilities.

Update Nov. 4, 2021...

For more than sixty years the Decadal Surveys have embodied a consensus vision for our field. As the US national organization for open-access nighttime optical astronomy, NOIRLab stands ready, along with our managing organization the Association of Uni...

Project & Science News

The Second SCOC-Science Collaborations Workshop will be held virtually on Nov 16-18. The main goal of this workshop is to discuss draft recommendation for the initial survey strategy formulated by the Survey Cadence Optimiza...

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded its 2020 Project Management Excellence Award to the project team for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which recently embarked on a five-year mission to create the largest 3D map of the sky.

The SATCON2 workshop addressed a watershed moment in the transformation of space. In 2018, a few thousand operational satellites orbited the Earth. By 2030, there may be more than 100,000. A massive cloud of satellites presents significant to existenti...

Members of the team that developed the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF) software system are this year’s recipients of the Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) Prize for an Outstanding Contribution to Astronomical Software...

Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is under construction at Cerro Pachón in the Coquimbo Region of Chile, has broken two Guinness World Records. One record goes to the project's digital camera for having the highest resolution in the world, and the other...

After nearly a decade of work, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has delivered the last of the six filters built for use with Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time Camera (LSSTCam). The filters have now all arrived at ...

Project & Science News

Rubin Observatory leadership showcased recent accomplishments and discussed upcoming plans at this year’s National Science Foundation (NSF)/Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Status Review, which was held virtually October 4-7...

The Satellite Constellations 2 (SATCON2) workshop, held 12–16 July 2021, brought together more than 350 astronomers, satellite operators, dark-sky advocates, policy experts, and other stakeholders from 40 countries to discuss how to implement the strat...