EDITOR’S NOTES

Suzanne Jacoby, Manager for EPO

With this second issue of the LSST E-News, we continue to inform interested colleagues and project members of recent activities as well as raise public awareness of LSST. You can read about LSST in the May issue of Discover Magazine (“Movie Camera to the Stars”) and the upcoming September issue of Sky & Telescope. Our list of institutional members has grown to 24 with the addition of Rutgers University at the June Board Meeting. Our list of project members has grown as well, with almost 160 team members attending the All Hands Meeting in May. The meeting focused on preparation for the Preliminary Design Review and featured strong representation from all Science Collaboration Teams… and a soccer game!

Anna Spitz plays a big part in these newsletters as our science writer: drafting, writing, and coercing articles from the sub-system managers for each issue. And web designer Mark Newhouse makes each E-News issue look great on his screen and arrive in your mailbox or browser without distortion. Thanks to Anna and Mark and to all our readers, for your continued support and interest in LSST.

PROJECT MANAGER’S CORNER

Don Sweeney, LSST Project Manager

LSST’s accomplishments in the first five months of 2008 were substantial. The M1/M3 mirror high fire was successful reaching a high temperature of approximately 1165°C (2125°F) over March 28th and 29th. The LSST mirror is now annealing and cooling gradually to room temperature in the slowly rotating oven of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. Technicians will remove it for grinding and polishing in mid-August. Competitive bidding for the secondary mirror contract is complete and a contract will be let this month. Read more

FOCUS ON…

LSST All Hands Meeting in Urbana, Illinois: Great Success in Team Building

Over 150 members of the LSST team descended on Urbana, Illinois from May 19th through May 23rd for the fourth annual All Hands Meeting. The meeting saw project management and science working group meetings, plenary sessions, breakout groups and the first inaugural East v. West soccer tournament. Read more

Camera Team News

The largest digital camera prepares for PDR and welcomes new international member

The LSST camera will be the largest digital camera ever constructed. Its size of 1.6 meters by 3 meters is roughly the size of a small car and it will weight 2800 kilograms. It is a large-aperture, wide-field optical (0.3-1 μm) imager designed to provide a 3.5° field of view with better than 0.2 arcsecond sampling.

Steve Kahn and Kirk Gilmore (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) manage the LSST camera team, which includes members from eighteen institutions. This team is refining the camera design submitted at the Conceptual Design Review to ready it for the formal inspection of the high level Preliminary Design Review expected in early 2009. The team is carrying out system trade studies, camera mechanical design evolution, planning for camera integration and servicing, camera utilities and vacuum system design, and electronics and controls development. Read More

LSST Soccer (aka Football): Where East Meets West

Phil Marshall, UCSB, Strong Gravitational Lensing Collaboration Chair

The East Coast Hurricanes held the West Coast Earthquakes to a 1-1 draw in the inaugural annual LSST East v. West football match. With the University of Illinois sports center venue packed with literally dozens of players and fans, an enthralling battle was played out in the evening sunshine, with many players rediscovering their touch of old and some young talent beginning to show. It was a game of two halves - while the bruising West players started and finished strongly, the East controlled the middle part of the game, and survived to hang on for the tie. Read more

LSST ‘Camera’ Project Exposes Long Island Student to Physics

Kendra Synder, Brookhaven National Laboratory

Rose Malinow’s parents are both biologists, but the recent high school graduate will tell you that their love for life sciences isn’t genetic.

“I really don’t like biology,” she said. “Math is different because it just makes sense; there’s always a right answer. But more than anything, I just like to build stuff.”

It’s no surprise that Malinow, who graduated from Long Island’s Cold Spring Harbor High School in August, plans to study engineering at Georgia Tech in the fall. Recently, however, she’s gotten a taste of a different scientific flavor—physics. Since January, Malinow has worked with Brookhaven National Laboratory physicists Peter Takacs and Paul O’Connor on specialized instrumentation for the LSST. Read more

LSST Corporate Offices Have Moved

The LSST Corporate headquarters have relocated from our Camp Lowell Drive offices to the 5th floor of Steward Observatory on the University of Arizona campus. Tucson-based project members are now separated by no more than the width of Cherry Avenue. NOAO provides office space for both the Telescope & Site and Data Management groups; EPO and Corporate functions are housed at Steward including John Schaefer, Sidney Wolff, and Don Sweeney.

LSST Corporation
933 N. Cherry Avenue
Tucson, AZ 85721
520-881-2626 (main number)
520-881-2627 (fax)

UPCOMING ISSUES

Our next issues will provide updates about the science roadmap, M1/M3 status, simulations, EPO and data management and our feature highlighting a team member.

PREVIOUS ISSUES

Read past issues in the LSST E-News Archive.