PROJECT NEWS - Para español, vea abajo

Five members of the Telescope & Site team traveled to Venice, Italy, last week for a successful preliminary design review of the Dome status with vendor EIE.  

The LSST M1M3 Mirror Cell contract has been awarded to Arizona-based CAID Industries, Inc.

The Camera team is evaluating broadband AR coating samples for the three camera lenses.  

Acquisition plans for the NCSA Development and Integrations Cluster have been updated to expedite the hardware purchases.

The science collaboration (SC) chairs met by phone this week and discussed incorporating scientists from LSST international affiliate institutions into SC activities, augmenting the SC presence on the LSST website, and thinking about science opportunities with the LSST telescope after the ten-year survey is complete.

Minutes from the October 5th meeting of the LSST Science Advisory Council (SAC) are now posted; the agenda for the face-to-face meeting in Tucson on 11/16 was discussed.   Please contact SAC members with comments. 

PERSONNEL NOTES – our distributed project team is growing!

Ron Lambert remains in Chile but has transferred from NOAO/CTIO to LSST as our Network Architect.

Jeff Barr remains the LSST Telescope and Site Architect but has relocated from Chile back to Tucson.

Neill Mills joins the Telescope & Site group as the M1 Mechanical Designer / Technician.

The Camera group has several new members.   At SLAC, Margaux Lopez and Scott Newbry are now with the Camera Integration and Testing team.  UPenn welcomes Richard Diurba and Michael Rielly to the Camera Electronics team and Adrian Nikolica to the Camera-Raft team.   In addition, Ron Angona has joined the Camera-Raft group at Brookhaven. 

Mike Kelsey is now part of Jacek Becla’s Database team at SLAC. 

In addition, Sandra Ortiz was recently promoted to Executive Assistant to the Directorate, providing support for the LSSTPO Directorate and Project Management Office.

UPCOMING MEETINGS with LSST INVOLVEMENT:

November 12, 2015: LSST Workshop, noon @ 47^th DPS Meeting, National Harbor, MD

November 19-20, 2015: LSST Observing Strategy Retreat, Tucson, AZ

December 3-4, 2015: NSF Status Review

January 7, 2016: LSST Town Hall, 6:30pm @AAS 227, Kissammee, FL

February 22-24, 2016: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Santa Cruz, CA

March 8-10, 2016: 2^nd Annual US-Chile Education Summit, Chile

April 11-13, 2016: LSSTC Board Meeting in Washington, DC.

May 24-26, 2016: XLDB 2016 Conference and Workshop, SLAC

June 28-July 1, 2016: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation, Edinburgh, Scotland

August 15-19, 2016: LSST 2016 Project & Science Workshop

PROJECT NEWS

An executive summary of the LSST Monthly Technical Progress Report for August has been submitted to the NSF and posted on our public website: http://lsst.org/news/monthly-progress-updates

Telescope and Site team members held a Final Design Review for the Hexapod and Rotator at Moog CSA in Mountain View, CA, earlier this week. The emphasis was on the software, control system, mechanical design and schedule; project response to the vendor is in progress.

Key Project Personnel have been asked to extend their travel to the February Joint Technical Meeting to accommodate a half-day retreat for a discussion of Workplace Culture and the implementation of trusted reporting systems including trained ombudspersons.

Steve Kahn, Victor Krabbendam, and Beth Willman circulated an LSST Project statement on sexual harassment.

UPCOMING MEETINGS with LSST INVOLVEMENT:

• November 12, 2015: LSST Workshop, noon @ 47th DPS Meeting, National Harbor, MD
• November 19-20, 2015: LSST Observing Strategy Retreat, Tucson, AZ
• December 3-4, 2015: NSF Status Review
• January 7, 2016: LSST Town Hall, 6:30pm @AAS 227, Kissimmee, FL            
• February 22-24, 2016: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Santa Cruz, CA
• March 8-10, 2016: 2nd Annual US-Chile Education Summit, Chile
• April 11-13, 2016: LSSTC Board Meeting in Washington, DC.
• May 24-26, 2016: XLDB 2016 Conference and Workshop, SLAC
• June 28-July 1, 2016: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation, Edinburgh, Scotland
• August 15-19, 2016: LSST 2016 Project & Science Workshop

PROJECT NEWS

AURA/LSST is actively soliciting applications for two new positions [1] a postdoctoral research assistant to work with Beth Willman on pre-cursor LSST science investigations: http://ls.st/hgt  and [2] a Training Coordinator.  In addition, recruitment for the EPO Manager has been extended another month.   LSST positions at all sites can be found at www.lsst.org/hiring.

The Data Management team held a successful Boot Camp earlier this week for team members distributed across three locations:  Tucson, Princeton, and University of Washington.  Agenda and presentations can be found on community.lsst.org; video will follow.

The Telescope & Site team is attending a formal design review for the secondary mirror taking place at Harris (formerly Exelis) in Rochester, NY this week.  The purpose of this review is to assess the final design and readiness of the M2 mirror cell assembly, its technical scope, schedule, management, risk and environment, safety, and health (ESH) concerns. 

The Camera team completed a success Test-Stand Readiness Review at BNL last week, providing assurance the test stands and procedures used for acceptance and performance verification of the CCDs are ready for use on production hardware, and consistent with safety and quality assurance processes.

LSST simulation data are now available through public website.  Those interested will find CatSim, OpSim, PhoSim, ImSim, GalSim, MAF, and AlertSim datasets and documentation starting at http://lsst.org/scientists/simulations

UPCOMING MEETINGS with LSST INVOLVEMENT:

• October 9-10, 2015: LSSTC Board Meeting, Tucson, AZ
• November 12, 2015: LSST Workshop, noon @ 47th DPS Meeting, National Harbor, MD
• November 19-20, 2015:LSST Observing Strategy Retreat, Tucson, AZ
• December 3-4, 2015: NSF Status Review
• January 7, 2016: LSST Town Hall, 6:30pm @AAS 227, Kissimmee, FL            
• February 22-24, 2016: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Santa Cruz, CA
• March 8-10, 2016: 2nd Annual US-Chile Education Summit, Chile
• May 24-26, 2016: XLDB 2016 Conference and Workshop, SLAC
• June 28-July 1, 2016: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation, Edinburgh, Scotland
• August 15-19, 2016: LSST 2016 Project & Science Workshop

LSST IN THE NEWS:

• Citizen Scientists Published (Space Warps Project), Symmetry, September 21, 2015
• Future Telescopes, September 28, 2015, BBC Video
• BNL engineer Veljko Radeka honored by the American Physical Society: http://ls.st/pvg

• BNL engineer Veljko Radeka honored by the American Physical Society: http://ls.st/pvg

UPDATE: EARTHQUAKE IN CHILE

• LSST construction activities on Cerro Pachón have returned to normal following the recent earthquake. The concrete batch plant is back in operation and the 70-ton crane is on the summit, placing steel frames at the corners of the facilities building.  See image on FaceBook.

PROJECT OFFICE NEWS

• B. Willman traveled to New Haven to speak to the AURA Board of Directors about preparing the community to conduct LSST science, and traveled to Monterey to present a talk at the GMT Community Workshop about "LSST - A Discovery Machine for ELT Era Science".  See Beth’s GMT slides.
• S. Kahn gave the AURA Board an update on LSST construction progress; work on the Operations Governance Plan continues.  
• Z. Ivezic, chair of the Project Science Team, reports that last week’s meeting included these discussion topics:
  • A planned “clarification” update to the Science Requirements Document
  • Development of a System-wide parameters database coordinated among all subsystems
  • A policy for open access to commissioning data

PROJECT SUBSYSTEM NEWS

Camera: The Filter Coating procurement review was executed in preparation for release of RFP by LLNL.

Data Management: Version 11.0 of the LSST Stack (aka Summer 2015) is available at http://ls.st/oan.

Telescope & Site: In today’s project blog posting B. Gressler writes about this week’s Preliminary Design Review of the Telescope Mount Assembly in Spain. 

Systems Engineering: The monthly Risk Management Meeting reviewed risks and opportunities in the EPO and Project Management Office subsystems.     

SAVE THE DATE:

October 1-2, 2015: Sensor Test Stand Readiness Review, Brookhaven National Lab
October 8-9, 2015: LSSTC Board Meeting, Tucson, AZ
November 12, 2015: LSST Workshop @ 47th DPS Meeting, National Harbor, MD
November 19-20, 2015: LSST Observing Strategy Retreat, Tucson, AZ
December 3-4, 2015: NSF Status Review
January 7, 2016: LSST Town Hall @AAS 227, Kissammee, FL
February 22 – 24, 2016: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Santa Cruz, CA   

• Future Telescopes, September 28, 2015, BBC Video