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LSST E-News

LSST E-News

April 2010  •  Volume 3 Number 1

LSST E-News

With this issue of E-News, the LSST Project Office enters our third year of producing a quarterly newsletter. Our goal is to make it informative to a broad audience, whether they are working directly on the project or just interested in following its progress. Back issues are available online.

The LSST Science Council, Operations and Image Simulations groups, Data Management team and assorted managers gather at UW in Seattle to discuss a range of project issues in early March, 2010.

Activities are accelerating as we prepare for our Preliminary Design Review and get ready for construction. The Science Council convened at the University of Washington in early March to review proposed changes to the Science Requirements Document. An additional day was scheduled to review the Operations Simulator and Image Simulation efforts, as well as a side meeting on User Interfaces for both Science and EPO. We had a successful on-site NSF review in mid-December to evaluate our Final Design Proposal, which has requested funding for the 30-month period prior to construction start. Additional activities are described in the articles that follow.

M1/M3 MIRROR UPDATE

LSST mirror blank on the Large Optical Generator

A mid-March visit to the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab shows the exciting work underway on the LSST M1/M3 mirror with the Large Optical Generator (LOG): diamond generating the front surface curvature of the combined mirror surfaces. The generating of the M1/M3 figure should be finished by early May; then on to the grinding and polishing. Read More…


IT’S TERAGRID TIME

Map of TeraGrid supercomputer clusters. Credit: Courtesy of Indiana University.

We’ve just received word that the Data Management (DM) team has been awarded significant resources on the TeraGrid, the National Science Foundation’s supercomputing infrastructure consisting of large clusters of computers located at eleven centers in the US. This award will allow the team to perform its most ambitious test to date as it practices processing the massive amounts of data LSST will produce. Read more…


NEWS FROM CHILE

The AURA Board gathers at scenic viewpoint Vista Sidney Wolff.

Vista Sidney Wolff

LSST President Sidney Wolff was honored by the AURA Board in February by the naming of scenic viewpoint Vista Sidney Wolff on the road to the Cerro Pachón in Chile. The construction of the vista point is a tribute to Dr. Wolff’s leadership in enabling the construction of world-class facilities on Cerro Pachón high in the Andes Mountains. (NOAO Press Release)

Earthquake in Chile

As has been widely reported, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck central/southern Chile on Saturday, 27 February 2010, 210 miles SW of Santiago. The earthquake, one of the most powerful on record worldwide, caused significant casualties and damage throughout central and southern Chile but no significant damage to observing facilities in the area. Read More…


THE CHANGING UNIVERSE: CATCHING TRUTHS IN FLEETING EVENTS

Double Supernova Remnants DEM L316. Copyright: Gemini Observatory, GMOS-South, NSF

In the supposedly unchanging eternal sky, ancient Chinese observers were drawn to unusual appearances: “guest stars” were portents of earthly events to court astrologers. Today, cosmic explosions and variability announce ever-stranger physical phenomena to modern astronomers, while improved observational tools illuminate intriguing new aspects of known systems. Supernovae, variable stars, gamma-ray bursts, and gravitational lenses are just some of the creatures of the transient Universe that LSST will reveal. This issue’s article from the LSST Science Book is based on Chapter 8: The Transient and Variable Universe. Read More…


KIAN-TAT LIM — HANDLING TRILLIONS OF WEB PAGE VISITS OR TRILLIONS OF OBSERVATIONS

Information Systems Specialist K.-T. on Mauna Kea

Handling extremely large data sets exhilarates Kian-Tat Lim. Whether it’s Yahoo! dealing with billions of users visiting thousands of web pages for trillions of page views or LSST viewing billions of objects thousands of times for trillions of observations, Kian-Tat enjoys the challenge of managing these data. Read More…


LSST SHOWS ITS STUFF IN WASHINGTON

AAS Logo

Continuing our annual tradition, LSST again had a strong showing at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), held this year in Washington, DC. In addition to the usual posters and exhibit, approximately 100 scientists gathered for a Splinter Meeting organized by Michael Strauss, chair of the LSST Science Advisory Committee. This meeting was an opportunity for those interested and involved in the LSST Science Collaborations to understand the current state of the project and learn how to contribute during our Final Design Phase. Read More…

 

LSST is a public-private partnership. Funding for design and development activity comes from the National Science Foundation, private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support at Department of Energy laboratories and other LSSTC Institutional Members:

Brookhaven National Laboratory; California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell University; Drexel University; Google Inc.; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Institut de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3); Johns Hopkins University; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; National Optical Astronomy Observatory; Princeton University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Space Telescope Science Institute; The Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of California, Davis; University of California, Irvine; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Michigan; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; University of Washington; Vanderbilt University

LSST E-News Team:

  • Suzanne Jacoby (Editor-in-Chief)
  • Anna Spitz (Writer at Large)
  • Mark Newhouse (Design & Production: Web)
  • Emily Acosta (Design & Production: PDF/Print)
  • Sidney Wolff (Editorial Consultant)
  • Additional contributors as noted

LSST E-News is a free email publication of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project. It is for informational purposes only, and the information is subject to change without notice.

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