From the Director, Steven Kahn

The long awaited news has arrived – LSST has received its federal construction start! On Friday afternoon, August 1, the NSF authorized the LSST project for construction with $27.5M in FY14 and a budget plan that stays within a $473M overall budget cap. AURA received NSF support to manage construction of LSST; the NSF press release describes LSST construction as “taking astronomy to the next level”. This marks the official federal start of the LSST project. Read more...

LSST’s Calypso telescope moved from Kitt Peak to Tucson

Early in the morning on May 28th, 2014, LSST’s 1.2-meter Calypso telescope took the first step of a long voyage from Kitt Peak National Observatory to Chile’s Cerro Pachón mountain, where it will accompany LSST as an essential calibration instrument. Through the efforts of a skilled team and thorough preparation, the move was successful, and by late-afternoon on the same day, Calypso had been delivered to the NOAO loading bay in Tucson. Read more…

John Andrew - Drawing a Straight Line from Concept to Hardware

LSST Design Engineer John Andrew always enjoyed taking things apart, seeing how they worked and putting them back together again – an interest put to good use during his recent project coordinating the disassembly and relocation of the Calypso telescope from Kitt Peak to NOAO in Tucson. Although arguably also applicable to his childhood aspiration of becoming a doctor, it is a predilection probably more suitable for engineering. Medicine’s loss is LSST’s gain. Read more…

Personnel

Eduardo Serrano

The LSST Project welcomes Eduardo Serrano as the Site Manager for the Telescope and Site team in Chile. Eduardo joins the LSST team in La Serena, most recently working at the SOAR telescope as site manager since 1998. He will work closely with Jeff Barr, the Project Architect, to support the upcoming summit facility construction activities and operate as the overall onsite safety manager to ensure compliance to LSST safety policies. Eduardo has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of La Serena and previously worked at CTIO in support of telescope engineering activities.

Carol Chirino

The LSST Project Office is pleased to welcome Administrative Assistant Carol Chirino to the LSST team. Carol will support daily operation of the LSST office in Chile, including providing support for local and visiting staff. She will coordinate LSST administration in Chile with the LSST Project Office in Tucson. Most recently a bi-lingual administrative specialist for Gemini South Operations Support, Carol has 12 years experience in demanding office environments. Before Gemini, she worked as an administrative assistant for the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmondton, Alberta, Canada.

Mario Juric

Mario Juric, LSST’s Data Management Project Scientist, has accepted a new position at University of Washington, where he joins the Astronomy Department and the eScience Institute as a faculty member. Beginning in September, Mario will relocate to Seattle, while continuing his duties for LSST remotely and through monthly trips to Tucson. Despite spending less time in the LSST Project Office, Mario’s new post is mutually beneficial, offering fresh challenges in data science, as well as opportunities to connect with cutting-edge research and researchers, overall contributing positively to LSST. Congratulations, Mario!

Hiring Campaign

LSST is taking the show on the road with an energetic new hiring campaign aimed at attracting a diverse and talented team to lead the project into its official construction phase. Equipped with a newly-designed website and a proactive recruitment strategy, LSST team members recently attended the American Astronomical Society Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, and the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, personally interacting with top scientists, engineers, educators and administrators in fields related to telescope construction and operation. Through active outreach efforts, word-of-mouth and a strong online presence, LSST is seeking highly-skilled individuals to join the project at this critical and exciting time in astronomical history.

The LSST Hiring Campaign website will be updated to show new positions as they become available. There are 12 open positions as we go to press with this issue of E-News.

Interns

Furman University junior Victoria Strait is a 2014 summer REU intern at UC Davis, working with Tony Tyson, Sam Schmidt, and James Jee. Victoria is applying her knowledge of astronomy and python programming to the problem of star-galaxy separation in very deep imaging surveys. The Deep Lens Survey is an LSST precursor survey. Using Deep Lens Survey data, plus recent infrared coverage of those same fields, Victoria is designing an optimal star-galaxy separation algorithm, which makes use of all the multicolor and morphology information.

Gretchen Stahlman, a doctoral student at the UA School of Information Resources & Library Sciences, is working with Suzanne Jacoby and the Communications Team to update LSST’s image use policy and communication processes as well as designing a web-based timeline and framework to digitally archive historical information about the development and construction of LSST, among other projects related to communication.

Zachary Reyna, an undergraduate engineering student from Iowa State University, is working with LSST Safety Officer Chuck Gessner to conduct a safety/human factors/ergonomic analysis of the dome and its subsystems.

Welcome, Interns!

L1/L2 Lenses

Through a competitive bidding process, LSST has selected Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. to design and build the L1-L2 lens assembly, which includes two refractive lenses and the precision support structure to which the lenses will be mounted. As described in a recent Ball Aerospace press release, the company will work closely with Arizona Optical Systems (AOS) to machine and polish the lenses and conduct optical testing. Ball Aerospace has previously participated in space telescope projects such as NASA’s Kepler and Landsat-8 missions, among other Department of Defense, NASA, NOAA and other government ventures. Ball Aerospace will use this formidable expertise to design and integrate the L1-L2 lens assembly, representing a significant contribution to the success of LSST.

DrupalCon Austin

The LSST web team made its annual trip to DrupalCon June 2-6 with the maturing LSST website redesign project in mind. Drupal is a free, modular, and open source content management framework used by LSST for its websites. DrupalCon, the largest gathering of Drupal developers and users, afforded the LSST web team the opportunity to meet, brainstorm, and share lessons learned with the approximately 3,300 other Drupal users who attended. During the week in Austin, Texas, the team focused on sessions addressing “Frankensites,” accessibility, security, and best practices for upgrading to new Drupal versions. Read more…

In the News

• 2014 August 6 U of A News - UA Optics at Heart of Telescope Poised to Catch the Action in the Universe
• 2014 August 5 Science Magazine - Unusual new telescope gets green light
• 2014 August 4 Texas A&M - AURA's Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to Begin Construction, Thanks to National Science Foundation Funding Support
• 2014 August 4 UC Davis - Funds awarded to begin construction of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
• 2014 July 21 BNL Newsroom - Instrumentation Division Nears Production Phase for LSST Camera Sensors
• 2014 June 27 Symmetry Magazine - Getting the jump on big data for LSST
• 2014 June 25 - Quality Magazine - CMS Announces William Gressler as Keynote Speaker for 2014 CMSC
• 2014 June 23 - Phys.org - UK astronomers debate involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
• 2014 June 19 - Ball Aerospace - Ball Aerospace Selected to Build Lens Assembly for the LSST Camera