LSST E-News

News from the Project Management Office

The New Year closes out our 3rd year of quarterly E-News and finds us busier than ever, as our high ranking in the NRC’s Decadal Survey has given the project greater visibility in higher circles. Top priority is submitting a new construction proposal to the National Science Foundation, due at the end of January. But we’re always busy at this time of year preparing for the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society, this year taking place in Seattle, WA, home of UW, one of the four founding members of LSST. We’ll have an especially high presence at the meeting with a full-day “splinter meeting” at UW on Sunday 1/9, a special session on “Community Science with LSST” on Monday afternoon 1/10, and 25 posters about LSST up all day on Tuesday the 11^th. Check the Meetings tab on lsstcorp.org for more information. Read More…

SC10: International Conference on High Performance Computing

LSST is one of the premier examples of how high performance computing advances will expand our scientific boundaries. Salman Habib, Jeff Kantor and Stuart Marshall demonstrated these advances at SC10, Super Computing’s 23rd meeting in November 2010 where its theme, The Future of Discovery, showcased how high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and commerce. IEEE Computer Society and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) sponsored the meeting and over 11,000 attended. While much focus was on computing in climate studies, LSST collaborators impressed attendees with the plans for data management and the possibilities for discoveries well beyond our planet. Read More…

LSST’s Focal Plane Components Take Shape

When the survey begins near the end of the decade, an array of 201 specially-designed CCDs and electronics buried within LSST’s massive camera will begin converting the light captured by the telescope into digital data at a rate of about 11 trillion bits per hour. Accomplishing this task requires an entirely new generation of CCD image sensor, and a team of engineers within the Camera collaboration has been working for the past several years with experienced vendors to demonstrate the needed new technologies. To meet the exacting requirements of LSST’s science program, the CCDs have to be made from specially-grown silicon crystals and then mounted in precision packages that will form the “paving stones” of the mosaic focal plane. Read More…

Active Galactic Nuclei – Revealing Black Hole Growth in Galaxies and the Structure of the Universe

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are brilliant and enigmatic markers distributed throughout the Universe. AGN host the most powerful energy sources in the Universe and are some of the most distant cosmic objects observed. The central engine of an active galaxy can produce more than 100 times the energy of a large spiral galaxy such as the Milky Way across the spectrum of wavelengths from radio waves to X-rays and sometimes the highest-energy gamma rays. They do have, however, a wide luminosity range of greater than 10⁷. Their distribution can trace large-scale structures in the Universe, revealing not only how galaxies come to be but also how the Universe is organized. LSST observations will make significant contributions to the information we have about these remarkable objects. Read More…

Diversifying Research and Communication in Astronomy: Lucianne Walkowicz

How free is the life of an astronomer? For Lucianne Walkowicz, being an astronomer provides freedom that most people don’t have or recognize exists in a scientific career: “By and large I get to pursue questions that I find intellectually interesting to whatever manner I can think of. Being an astronomer is a very creative job, which I don’t think the general public realizes.” Lucianne pursues her interests in a variety of research efforts at the University of California (UC) Berkeley Astronomy Department these days. Her main challenge is to not overcommit herself given the myriad of interesting projects that excite her intellectual curiosity. Read More…