Rubin Digest 23 July 2024

23 July 2024

Project & Science News

The Rubin Community Workshop at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is underway this week in Menlo Park, CA, with approximately 240 Rubin staff, affiliates, and members of the Rubin science community attending in person. More than 250 additional people are participating virtually in this fully hybrid meeting. Announcements and reports from the meeting will be included in the next Digest.

The sixth in a series of Rubin science releases showcasing Rubin’s upcoming contributions to astronomy and astrophysics is now available. Read (in English or Spanish) and share “Rubin Observatory Will Detect Thousands of Elusive Brown Dwarfs, Unlocking Milky Way Mysteries,” at rubinobservatory.org.

We are saddened to inform you that our Rubin colleague and cheerful friend, Darko Jevremovic from the Belgrade Observatory, passed away unexpectedly on July 11th, 2024 at the age of 56. Darko led a group of Serbian astronomers to join the Project as early as 2011 and co-organized the LSST@Europe2 meeting in Belgrade in 2016. He contributed to Data Management's alert distribution design and to early LSST catalog simulations, and was a regular attendee at Rubin's all-hands summer meetings. Aside from his Rubin-related work, Darko was one of the principal developers of the Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database. All of us who worked with Darko will miss him greatly.

In early July, the summit team removed Rubin’s Secondary Mirror (M2) from the container where it has been stored since it was coated in 2019, and integrated it with the mirror cell (photos here). The full M2 assembly consists of the secondary mirror, mirror support system, mirror cell electronics and sensors, thermal control system, and the mirror control system. It is supported by 72 axial actuators and 6 tangential actuators. The M2 assembly will soon be installed on the telescope mount, and then the summit team will re-install the Rubin Commissioning Camera.

LSST Discovery Alliance News

LSST Discovery Alliance (LSST-DA) Inclusive Collaboration Initiatives are innovative programs with an immediate goal to position a diverse community of researchers to make cutting-edge scientific discoveries with Rubin LSST and a broader goal to change how science is done and who’s at the table. Please spread the word about these opportunities, including the Childcare Support Program to facilitate participation of parents in key science collaboration meetings, and the Expansion Partnership Program, which makes LSST science accessible to research communities that might otherwise be excluded.

Personnel Announcements & Opportunities:

Manuel Gomez began work with the SIT-Com team in Chile on July 8th as Instrumentation Engineer. Manuel will be participating in Rubin Auxiliary Telescope engineering runs, monitoring system performance to enhance operational efficiency.

Adam Bolton began work with the Rubin Data Management Team as the new Data Facilities Lead at SLAC on July 15th. Adam will run the US Data Facility and Data Access Center for Rubin Operations and coordinate data processing with Rubin’s French and UK facilities.

Brian Brondel joined the Telescope & Site team as Full-stack DevOps Python Developer on July 15th. Based in Tucson to start, and relocating to Chile in the coming months, Brian will be assisting with lower level components as well as working on various databases and related services.

Ross Ceballo joined the Data Management team on July 15th, working remotely as Lead Build Engineer. In this role, Ross will lead the build engineering team and support the pipelines release and continuous integration system.

Alex Broughton joined the Data Management team on July 15th, based at SLAC. As a member of the Algorithms and Pipelines group, Alex will be working on instrument signature removal — specifically brighter-fatter, linearity, and photon transfer curves.

Visit the Rubin hiring page to see all open positions with Rubin.

Info For Project Members:

Nominate someone deserving for a future staff award on the Staff Awards page on the Project website (login required).

If you’d like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Victor or Zeljko, please fill out this form to indicate your preferred date and time.

The link to Rubin’s anonymous “suggestion box” will be changing soon, until a new link is announced please contact our Workplace Culture Advocates (login required) with your suggestions.

Rubin Observatory swag items, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, and more, are available for purchase in our not-for-profitonline store.

Upcoming Meetings With Rubin Observatory Involvement

2024