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LSST E-News

LSST E-News

June 2012  •  Volume 5 Number 1

The heat is on, from both Tucson’s hot summer season and the increasing intensity of activity as LSST moves forward in the process of seeking construction support. The news this quarter is best told in the pictures and captions below...


PROJECT MANAGER TRANSITION

Don Sweeney (left) congratulates his successor Victor Krabbendam on his appointment as the new LSST Project Manager. (Image Credit: LSST Corporation)

Victor Krabbendam, current LSST Deputy Project Manager and Telescope and Site Subsystem Manager, has been named as LSST’s new Project Manager. The long-planned transition officially takes effect July 1, 2012. Victor replaces Don Sweeney, whose hard work and dedication as LSST’s first and, until now, only project manager has shepherded the crucial design and development phase. Don is taking a well-deserved break from nine plus years of commuting, but he will continue working with the project in a smaller, part-time role. Victor has a 26 year career focused on the development, construction, and management of large optical systems for both ground and space applications. Prior to joining LSST in 2004, he was a lead engineer and manager for the Hobby Eberly and SOAR telescopes. Victor’s appointment ensures consistency and a smooth transition as the project continues preparing for construction.


REVIEWS

Members of the NSF Cost Review committee and LSST team members look over the LSST primary/tertiary mirror blank while touring the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. (Photo by Don Sweeney)

Understandably, funding agencies want a large project like LSST to be fully vetted by external non-advocates as well as the agencies themselves before funding is recommended. This process of assessment has made Spring the review season. Both an NSF Cost Review and Joint (DOE/NSF) Interface and Management review took place in May. Also in April, the Summit Facility 90% review took place, where the sleek, aerodynamic structure that will house the LSST on Cerro Pachón was reviewed in the final stages of specification. Following a review last November, in April 2012 the LSST camera received “Critical Decision 1” approval by the U.S. Department of Energy to move into the next stage of the project. This milestone, along with the successful NSF Preliminary Design Review in September, gives the Project good momentum as we continue to move through the carefully structured process that we hope will ultimately result in construction funding.


WASHINGTON

LSST team members prepare to meet Congressional staffers at the AAS-sponsored Congressional Visits Day in Washington DC. (Image credit: LSST Corporation)

April was “LSST goes to Washington” month. Both the LSST and AURA Board Meetings took place in the capital, events which were leveraged into opportunities to increase the visibility of LSST. LSST was also an AAS-sponsored exhibitor at a Congressional Visits Day. LSST team members L. Walkowicz, W. Gressler, C. Claver, and S. Jacoby spoke with Congressional staffers at the Visit Day reception in the Rayburn Hall Foyer.



BRAZIL

Attendees of the Brazil LSST workshop pose in front of the meeting venue, the Hotel Orotur in Campos Do Jordão. (Photo by Don Sweeney)

In early April, ~80 attendees from the Brazilian astronomy community and 9 LSST team members met for several days in Campos Do Jordão, Brazil for the “Science with the LSST: A Brazilian/US Joint Workshop.” The LSST team presented the scientific reach and status of the project. Discussions were also held to determine if and how Brazil will engage in the LSST project. Bruno Castilho, Director Laboratório Nacional de Astrofisica, and LSST Project Manager Don Sweeney organized the meeting.



SPIE

The LSST exhibit for the SPIE meeting in Amsterdam features updates on the Camera, the Summit Facility, the Telescope, and Project status. (Graphic by Emily Acosta)

LSST will have a strong showing at the SPIE meeting in Amsterdam, with 25 papers or posters being presented and a booth in the exhibit hall. The Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation subgroup of the SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, meets every two years and is the premier professional gathering for engineers in many fields. In the online agenda (http://spie.org/x13662.xml) you’ll notice invited talks by Deputy Project Manager V. Krabbendam (LSST/NOAO) on The LSST Final Design Status and Data Management Deputy Project Manager M. Freemon (LSST/NCSA) on Data Management Cyberinfrastructure for LSST.



ALL HANDS MEETING

A double rainbow over the Catalina Mountains marked the end of the first day of the 2010 LSST All Hands Meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain resort north of Tucson. (Photo by Emily Acosta)

The 2012 All Hands Meeting will take place August 13 – 17 at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain north of Tucson. We’re expecting 250 scientists, engineers, and educators for 5 days of discussion and interaction. The 2010 LSST All Hands Meeting will be hard to beat. The first evening we were treated to a beautiful double rainbow (left) and the final day we heard the Decadal Survey announcement of LSST’s top priority for large ground-based facilities for the next decade. The jam-packed agenda for 2012 indicates that this year’s meeting will offer many opportunities for productive interactions. It will also be the first AHM to include attendance by representatives from institutions and countries that have indicated their intention to contribute to LSST operations.



Endangered Sandillón Cactus Takes Significant Step toward Return to Cerro Pachón

Sandillón (Eriocyce aurata) seedling propagated as part of LSST's environmental impact mitigation efforts. (photo by Jeff Barr)

The first specimen of the endangered cactus species, Sandillón (Eriocyce aurata), propagated in a University of La Serena laboratory as part of LSST’s environmental mitigation program, has been relocated to the greenhouse on Cerro Pachón. The relocation is a significant milestone in LSST’s effort to mitigate the effects of site excavation on the endangered species of Chile (LSST E-News, October 2011 Volume 4 Number 3). Read more...



DrupalCon 2012 – Goin’ Mobile (with apologies to The Who)

Desktop computer witht the words 'This is Not the Web' on the screen

This is not the web

LSST web team members Iain Goodenow, Emily Acosta, and Mark Newhouse were among the more than 3,100 people who attended DrupalCon 2012 March 19-23 in Denver. DrupalCon Denver's theme, "Collaborative Publishing for Every Device," focused on Drupal’s move toward supporting web access through mobile devices. “Given that nearly half of Internet traffic now comes by way of a mobile device and that many mobile Internet users rarely or never access the web via a traditional desktop browser, LSST must take these trends into consideration as we plan for the future,” Newhouse said. Read more...


From Radio-Controlled Planes to the Cosmos – Hu Zhan

Hu Zhan visits the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) at the Xinglong Observing Station.

As tenuous as a connection between television repair, radio-controlled airplanes, and the LSST may seem, Hu Zhan, cosmologist and co-chair of two LSST science collaborations, cites those two hands-on hobbies as crucial influences on his career. “My father assembled our family’s first TV set from parts,” Hu said. “My picking up that hobby and playing with those magic parts and tools was very effective for inspiring interest in science and technology.” Read More…



Seeking the Fundamentals of the Universe: Cosmological Physics with LSST

Credit: Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack, The New Universe and the Human Future, Figure 30. (Yale University Press, 2011).

The goal of LSST observations is to deepen our understanding of the Universe: its components, its origins, its fundamental nature and evolution, and the framework on which all these rest. Observations with a survey as comprehensive as LSST, one that samples an enormous volume of the Universe with billions of galaxies, can produce unsurpassed measurements and evidence to test our underlying theories and hone our cosmological framework, a framework that has undergone significant changes in the last two decades. Read More…



LSST Deputy Director Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

LSST Deputy Director Steve Kahn.

Steven Kahn, LSST deputy director and Camera Lead Scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He joins 220 individuals elected to the academy for 2012. The class includes some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, and artists. This year’s impressive cohort – announced on April 17 – includes Melinda Gates, Neil Simon, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I am, of course, delighted to have been elected to the academy,” said Kahn, a professor of particle physics and astrophysics at SLAC. “This is an extremely distinguished organization, and I feel very honored to have been recognized in this way.” 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:

Adler Planetarium; Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL); California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell University; Drexel University; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; George Mason 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 (KIPAC) – Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); National Optical Astronomy Observatory; National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Princeton University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Space Telescope Science Institute; Texas A & M University; The Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of California at Davis; University of California at 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)
  • Robert McKercher (Staff Writer)
  • 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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