Rubin Digest 26 November 2024

27 November 2024

Project and Science News

Project reminder: November 28-29 are Thanksgiving US holidays for Rubin with US staff likely unavailable/offline. 

The Commissioning team continues to share technical updates on the progress of on-sky commissioning activities using the Commissioning Camera (ComCam) on the Rubin Community Forum and the #commissioning-updates Slack channel. Highlights curated for a non-technical audience will also be posted on Rubin’s social media accounts. 

Rubin staff provided several impactful activities at the recent annual meeting of La Sociedad Chilena de Astronomía (SOCHIAS), held November 11-15 in Arica, Chile’s northernmost city. Education and Public Outreach team members Fernanda Urrutia and Ardis Herrold led a teacher training session on Rubin’s “Coloreando el Universo” investigation, which was attended by a roomful of enthusiastic educators. Holger Drass, Verification Systems Engineer for Rubin, gave a talk about Rubin and supported outreach efforts at the AURA-O exhibit booth. The Chilean scientific community continues to show a high level of interest and enthusiasm for Rubin and the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

More than 10 people from Rubin LSST France organized and staffed a booth at the Rencontres du Ciel et de l'Espace at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in La Villette, Paris. The event is one of the largest gatherings of amateur astronomers in France, with about ten thousand participants attending over three days. At the Rubin booth, participants admired a mechanical model of the LSST Camera filter in its filter stand — many people were familiar with Rubin and the LSST Camera because of the communications surrounding the camera’s arrival on the summit earlier this year. Another highlight of the meeting was a presentation on Rubin and cosmology given by Cécile Roucelle, an assistant professor at Laboratoire Astroparticule & Cosmologie (APC), in one of the venue’s main auditoriums. 

Save the date: Next year’s Rubin Community Workshop will take place the week of July 28 - August 1st, 2025, at the Marriott University Park in Tucson, AZ. The meeting will be fully hybrid with in-person attendance limited at 250 due to space limitations. Further details about the meeting will be available once the meeting website is set up and registration opens.

A workshop titled Astronomy for All: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within the Chilean astronomical community will be offered in-person (in Santiago, Chile) and online on January 20-21, 2025. This workshop is a collaborative effort between ESO, ALMA, AUI/NRAO, SOCHIAS, and various Chilean institutions to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within the Chilean astronomical community. More information is available on the workshop website. 

On December 6th, 9-11 a.m. Pacific Time, we will be holding a media training session for Rubin staff and scientists who wish to be connected with reporters/journalists for interviews. If you haven’t already filled out the media contact volunteer form and would like to be included in this training or to receive a recording of it, please submit the form at this link ASAP. 

Operations Updates

Congratulations to Rubin/NOIRLab staff members Yumi Choi, Aaron Meisner, and Sarah Greenstreet, who were selected as Research Corporation for Science Advancement (Scialog) fellows this year for their work on the topic: Early Science with Rubin Observatory's LSST. Eric Bellm, Rubin’s Alert Production Science Lead and a former Scialog fellow, was a facilitator for this round of awards. 

Reminder: If you plan to work with Rubin Data in the future, we encourage you to sign up for an account on the Rubin Science Platform now. This will allow you to get familiar with the interface, work out any issues, and get your data rights verified by the project so you can be sure to get data immediately when Data Preview 1 (DP1) is released. Rubin Data Rights holders can sign up for an account any time by following the instructions here. 

Personnel Announcements & Opportunities:

Congratulations to Sandrine Thomas on her appointment to the position of Associate Director of Rubin Observatory for Rubin Summit Operations. This key position holds responsibility for all the facility and telescope operations in Chile. Sandrine has been a part of the Rubin project since 2015, and has contributed immensely as the Telescope & Site Project Scientist and Deputy Director of Rubin Observatory Construction (NSF). Sandrine also leads Rubin’s Workplace Culture Advocacy team, introducing and supporting initiatives that improve Rubin's workplace culture. In her Operations role, Sandrine will lend her considerable technical and management skills to the success of Rubin Observatory, LSST, and NOIRLab. 

Lukas Eisert and Paulo Lago joined the Rubin team on November 18th. Lukas (Observing Specialist postdoc) and Paulo (Observing Specialist) will be responsible for operating and troubleshooting the Simonyi and Auxiliary telescope systems on the summit. 

Open positions with Rubin can be found on the Rubin hiring page.

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-profit online store. 

Upcoming Meetings with Rubin Observatory Involvement

(those with an asterisk* are supported by LSST Discovery Alliance): 

2025

January 12-16	American Astronomical Society (AAS 245) Winter Meeting, National Harbor, MD
January 14	Rubin Town Hall at AAS 245
March 18-25	NSF Research Infrastructure Workshop, El Segundo, CA
July 28-Aug 1	Rubin Community Workshop 2025, Tucson, AZ