Rubin Observatory Digest for 01 April 2025

2 April 2025

Project and Science News

Registration for the 2025 Rubin Community Workshop, to be held in Tucson July 28 - August 1, is now open. Please visit the meeting website for more information and a link to register. 

Since the LSST Camera was installed on the telescope in early March, the team on the summit has made good progress testing and preparing the camera to go on-sky later this month. The pumped chiller system (which cools the raft electronics) has reached -40°C, and both the cryo refrigeration system (which cools the camera's CCDs) and the CCDs will be turned on this week. Testing of the camera shutter and filter exchange system are also ongoing.

The summit team conducted dome endurance tests on March 27th, focusing on evaluating the performance of the dome’s capacitor banks. The test began with a long 30-degree slew, during which telemetry data was successfully recorded in the Engineering Facilities Database (EFD) from the outset. Following this, the dome was moved in 3-degree increments at full speed, reaching a peak velocity of 1.5° per second before transitioning to a slow crawl of 15 arcseconds per second. Throughout the test, the team monitored motor temperatures using an infrared camera and collected temperature data from the capacitor banks. At the conclusion of the test, they reported that both the dome and the capacitor banks demonstrated stable and repeatable performance. Photos and a video clip of the dome tests are available in the Gallery. 

Registration will open April 4th for the Fifth Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC)-LSST Science Collaborations workshop, to be held virtually on May 6-7, 2025. More details and registration information are available in this post on community.lsst.org.

LSST@Europe7 will be held September 15-19, 2025, in Poznań, Poland, and registration is now open. Building on the successes of previous conferences in the UK, Serbia, France, Italy, Croatia, and La Palma, LSST@Europe7 will mark a pivotal moment for the Rubin Observatory community with a focus on the first scientific results obtained with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). More information and a link to register can be found on the LSST@Europe7 meeting website.

Rubin in the Media

The recent installation of the LSST Camera garnered good media coverage in Chile, including stories in national newspapers El Mercurio and Las Últimas Noticias (LUN), as well as national TV stations (MEGA) and local TV stations (TVN Red Coquimbo).

LSST Discovery Alliance News

This week, LSST Discovery Alliance is hosting two asynchronous Slack discussions as part of the Project Dovetail Speaker Series: “Consultant-Supported Software Development” (April 2nd), and “Consultant-Supported Data Science and AI Analyses” (April 3rd). These conversations will explore how short-term, professional support from software and data science consultants can strengthen your astrophysics research. Join #project-dovetail to participate in these discussions. If you're affiliated with a member institution, contact your institutional representative for Zoom connection details. 

Operations Updates

On March 14-15, members of the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) team represented Rubin Observatory at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Planetarium of Chile. The team staffed a booth at the event, engaging with the public about how Rubin will soon transform astronomy with its massive data set. Additionally, on March 21st Rubin education specialists participated in AstroDay 2025, contributing with talks and workshops as well as interacting with attendees at an exhibit booth.

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:

Sasha Persaud joined the Rubin EPO team as Junior Full-Stack Developer on March 24th. Sasha will be responsible for designing and developing software applications critical to facilitating public engagement through data-driven experiences. 

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, Zeljko, Bob, or Phil, 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 use this form (login required) to make 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

May 5-8	AURA Management Council for Rubin (AMCR) Meeting, Tucson, AZ
May 18-23	Shaping the Future of Time-Domain Astronomy with LSST, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil*
June 8-12	AAS 246 Summer Meeting, Anchorage, AK
June 25-29	European Astronomical Society (EAS) annual meeting, Cork, Ireland
July 14-18	Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) Science Collaboration meeting, Durham, UK
July 21-25	Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) meeting, Urbana-Champaign, IL & virtual
July 28-August 1	Rubin Community Workshop 2025, Tucson, AZ
September 14-19	LSST@Europe7, Poznan, Poland