This month’s issue of E-News brings you up to date on a very significant project development, our successful completion of the NSF Preliminary Design Review (PDR). As we grind our way down the funding path, development of the Cerro Pachón site continues, including a delicate and successful preservation of indigenous plant species. Other E-News articles feature staff, science, and the LSST Operations Simulator as we strive to keep our extended community of readers informed and engaged.

Project Manager’s Corner

The Division of Astronomical Sciences (AST) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) convened a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project August 29 through September 2, 2011 in Tucson, Arizona. The review, the most significant the project has undergone so far, was in response to submission of the LSST Construction Proposal to the NSF. Although the PDR focused on project management and the project’s NSF-funded design work, the 12-member panel spent nearly five days reviewing every aspect of the project in great detail, including both the privately funded work on the major optics and the design of the camera, which is funded separately by the Department of Energy (DOE). Read more...

Wild Gardens of LSST Preserve Endangered Plant Species from El Peñón

Initial site leveling of El Peñón peak on Cerro Pachón has been completed, shortening the summit by nine vertical meters and removing approximately 19,000 cubic meters of rock and earth. While this massive engineering enterprise is both impressive and necessary to prepare for the LSST summit facility, calibration telescope, and roads, it displaces more than lifeless rubble. Cerro Pachón is home to a vibrant desert ecosystem. Read More…

The Operations Simulator

The LSST will operate as a survey telescope, robotically scanning the sky in a pre-programmed sequence of observations, then storing images in a public database for use by professional and citizen scientists exploring the wide range of LSST science topics. Much like scheduling an elevator to minimize wait time for riders, this sequence of observations, the “observing cadence”, must be optimized to provide data that enables the most science as efficiently as possible. The task of determining the optimum observing cadence to maximize the science is the job of the LSST Operations Simulator. Read More…

Squids Have Beaks and Other Mysteries of the Universe – Andy Rasmussen

Physicist Andy Rasmussen works with the SLAC-based Camera Team to develop and build the sensor array at the heart of the LSST camera, an instrument of unprecedented scale and scope. Rasmussen describes the scale of the camera’s focal plane as “mind boggling: three billion pixels, comprised of 189 science sensors, each segmented into 16 channels, all read out in two seconds – incredible!” The same enthusiasm evident in Rasmussen’s description of the LSST focal plane has been manifest in his lifelong love of research beginning as an amateur biologist. Read More…

LSST Looks at the Big Picture: Large-scale Structure of the Universe

What is the large-scale structure of the Universe and how did it come to be? This is perhaps the most fundamental question of cosmology. Scientists studying the large-scale structure of the Universe explore the “big picture” of how the Universe is organized over immense distances and time. With unprecedentedly large samples of galaxies from LSST, scientists will be able to move closer to definitive answers about how the Universe that we observe came to be. Read More…