Welcome to the December 2014 E-News

With this issue of LSST E-News the LSST Project Office (LSSTPO) steps out as a true construction project, responsible for Building the Future: the LSST observing facility. In contrast, the LSST Corporation (LSSTC) will focus its efforts on Preparing for Science, fundraising, and defining partnerships and plans for Operations. This distinction will become more clear in the coming months with the transfer of the M1M3 mirror from LSSTC to LSSTPO and emerging support from LSSTC for the science collaborations. The LSST Project Office will remain focused on the construction of the LSST facility as detailed in the baseline plan presented to the NSF and DOE federal funding agencies. An exciting milestone was achieved as we go to press…

November 20, 2014 – The 72,620 pound M1M3 shipping container was successfully transported from CAID Industries in Tucson to the UofA Mirror Lab. The 30ft × 30ft oversize load departed at 4am, escorted by four Tucson police cars and two pilot vehicles. Offloading was completed by 5:30am. Once Final Acceptance Testing is completed, the M1M3 will be stored locally in Tucson for final integrated testing prior to shipment to the summit facility in Chile. Additional photos available here.

LSST “Road Show” in Australia

LSST Director Steve Kahn and Project Scientist Zeljko Ivezic made a tour of major astronomical institutions in Australia during the last week in October. This so-called LSST “Road Show” came at the request of the Australian astronomical community and allowed that community to interact directly with the LSST leadership in investigating possible Australian involvement in the operations phase of the program. The tour included day-long sessions at the Australian Astronomical Observatory headquarters in Sydney, at Mt. Stromlo Observatory of the Australian National University in Canberra, at Swinburne University in Melbourne, and at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research on the campus of the University of Western Australia in Perth. Read more…

Successful DOE CD-2 Review for the LSST Camera!

The LSST Camera Team has just completed a very successful Department of Energy (DOE) Critical Decision-2 (CD-2) Review, an important step in gaining CD-2 approval of the performance baseline. The three-day review was held at SLAC November 4-6, 2014, and centered on a thorough examination of the cost, schedule, performance, and scope commitment to which DOE will execute the project. Reviewers described the team as being “superb”, well prepared, and working well together. “Scientific and technical efforts are exceptionally well balanced and integrated.” Read more…

LSST2014 Project and Community Workshop

The LSST2014 Project and Community Workshop, held August 11-15 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix, allowed LSST’s distributed technical teams to interact with each other and the broader science community. Sessions covered topics of cross-cutting significance and interest. Also for the first time, the Project shared the week with a concurrent science workshop – the LSST Observing Cadence Workshop jointly hosted by LSST and NOAO. In addition to substantive work to facilitate the transition to construction, the workshop also afforded the many new staff members who have joined LSST in recent months the opportunity to learn the LSST “big picture.”

The LSST2015 Project and Community Workshop will be held the week of August 17 in Seattle. Read more…

LSST M2 Substrate Received by Exelis

The LSST secondary mirror (M2) substrate has been safely relocated from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA to the Exelis facility in Rochester, NY. The mirror’s trek, which involved the use of a 50-ton internal bridge crane to load the mirror transport box onto a wide-load flatbed truck and a 70-ton external crane to offload it at destination, covered 604 miles in a little over a day. The truck and pilot vehicle departed Harvard at 1 pm on October 20 and arrived in Rochester at 3 pm on October 21. Subsequently, Exelis personnel have disassembled the transport box and thoroughly inspected the substrate. Read more…

New Hires

The LSST Hiring Campaign continues in full force as the project staffs up to meet the demands of the construction effort. Current positions, along with those filled and coming soon, are posted online at www.lsst.org/hiring. The five individuals highlighted in the article (linked below) have joined the project recently as examples of Top Talent Working in a Team Environment that Inspires Excellence – welcome! Read more…

LSST Science Advisory Committee Seeks Community Input

Now that federal construction on LSST has formally begun, the LSST Project has constituted a Science Advisory Committee (SAC). The committee’s job is to represent the wider scientific community (including the US astronomical community) and to advise LSST Project Director Steve Kahn as decisions are made throughout the LSST construction phase. Read more…

LSST Mirror Nears Completion

The LSST monolithic M1M3 mirror blank approaches completion at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. The combined primary (M1) and tertiary (M3) surfaces are seen on the left in this image from July 2014 with the red polishing compound highlighting the active polishing zone of M3. In anticipation of completion, the vacuum lifting fixture (right, September 2014) is being assembled to supply suction to lift the mirror off the polishing cell and lower it into the mirror transport box once the polishing is complete. The fixture will then be disassembled and stored locally until it’s time to reinstall the M1M3 for final optical testing in the telescope cell prior to shipment to Chile.

Andy Connolly’s TED Talk

In March of 2014, UW astronomer and LSST Simulations Lead Andy Connolly was a featured speaker at the Vancouver, Canada, TED Symposium. He describes LSST when talking about “What’s the Next Window into our Universe?”. This talk is now featured online:

“Big Data is everywhere – even the skies. In an informative talk, astronomer Andrew Connolly shows how large amounts of data are being collected about our universe, recording it in its ever-changing moods. Just how do scientists capture so many images at scale? It starts with a giant telescope…”

TMA Contract Officially Signed

August 13, 2014 – The LSST Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) contract has been signed by AURA and vendor GHESA Ingeniería y Tecnología, S.A (in consortium with ASTURFEITO, S.A.). The official signing took place in Spain between AURA President William Smith (right) and GHESA Union Temporal de Empresas Manager Luis Garcia Marchena (left) and witnessed by Spanish notary Jose Maria Garcia Pedraza.

GHESA, a state-of-the-art technological equipment manufacturer, is one of the largest engineering firms in Europe with technological and management capacity for development of varied, complex international projects. Asturfeito is a Spanish industrial group founded in 1989 as a manufacturing shop offering services in the fabrication, installation, and commissioning of large scientific structures with very accurate tolerance requirements.

The LSST TMA contract’s scope covers design, fabrication, testing and final commissioning.