Rubin Observatory Digest for 22 April 2025

28 April 2025

Project and Science News

The Rubin team took the first on-sky engineering data with the LSST Camera on April 15th, shortly after darkness fell on Cerro Pachón. The first images were taken with the i-band filter. Thanks to Rubin’s successful on-sky campaign using the Commissioning Camera, the telescope optical alignments were remarkably close to optimal before even looking at the sky. Along with the excellent initial performance of the full Observatory optical system, the LSST Camera, its supporting refrigeration equipment, and the data acquisition and control systems all demonstrated smooth operation, just a few weeks after installation. The Data Management system successfully transported and processed the 3-gigapixel images at the US Data Facility within about a minute of acquiring the exposures. More details about this achievement are available on community.lsst.org, and photos of Rubin’s various distributed teams celebrating the event are available in the Gallery.

During the upcoming period of on-sky commissioning with the LSST Camera, Rubin Observatory will resume sharing brief technical progress updates with the Rubin science community on a roughly weekly cadence. Posts will appear on community.lsst.org in the News category with the commissioning-updates tag and on the LSST-DA Slack workspace in the #commissioning-updates channel. High-level updates will be also shared on Rubin social media accounts. 

A new feature story, “Preparing for the Greatest Cosmic Movie,” highlighting the work leading up to on-sky observations with the LSST Camera, is now live on rubinobservatory.org. The story also appears on the NSF NOIRLab and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory websites. 

Don’t miss the opportunity to contribute to the 2025 Rubin Community Workshop! The deadline to submit poster abstracts and session suggestions is April 25. This year’s workshop will take place in Tucson, July 28 – August 1. For details and submission forms, visit community.lsst.org. To register for the event, head to the Rubin Community Workshop meeting website.

The Rubin Science Advisory Committee (SAC) welcomes its newest member, Richard Lane of Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins in Santiago, Chile. He is one of two Chilean representatives on the SAC, replacing Franz Bauer of Universidad Católica. The SAC extends its sincere thanks to Franz for his valuable contributions to the SAC, and a big welcome to Richard Lane!

Rubin in the Media

Rubin Observatory was featured in two recent stories on National Public Radio (NPR) stories in the United States. The first, “New, powerful telescope facility in Chile to film 10-year-long 'movie' of the sky.” aired on April 8th. The second, “If Planet Nine is out there, this telescope might actually find it,” aired the following day, April 9th. 

Rubin team members Sandrine Thomas, Deputy Director for Rubin Construction, and Ardis Herrold, Education Specialist, are featured in a March 31 Orbital Today article titled “Women Behind Telescope: How Scientists at Vera Rubin Observatory Shape the Future of Space Exploration & Inspire Girls in STEM.” The piece highlights their contributions to the observatory and their efforts to inspire the next generation of women in science.

Sandrine Thomas and Dominique Boutigny, CNRS Research Director at the Annecy Particle Physics Laboratory, were interviewed for a live radio story in France on April 14th titled “Vera C. Rubin Observatory: We will see more clearly.” Listen to it on the Radio France website. 

Operations Updates

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:

Kevin Wong joined Rubin’s Education and Public Outreach (EPO) team on April 21st as a Senior Backend Developer. Based in Tucson, AZ, Kevin will work with the EPO team to identify requirements, resolve bugs, and offer support during critical traffic periods.

Rubin is hiring a US Data Facility Lead Engineer based at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. More information about this and other 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	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*
December 1-5	LSST@LATAM, Mexico City, Mexico*