LSST E-News |
News from the Project Management Office
Deputy Project Manager Victor Krabbendam adds his signature to the LSST holiday cards.
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 11th. Check the Meetings tab on lsstcorp.org for more information.
Planning is underway for the April meeting of the LSST Board which will take place in La Serena, Chile, giving everyone a chance to visit the site of LSST on Cerro Pachón, building some excitement - before we build a telescope! The Board will enjoy some wonderful Chilean hospitability and see where the LSST Base and Summit facilities are planned to be integrated into the existing NSF and AURA infrastructure. With all the environmental and building permits and approvals in hand, planning continues for LSSTC’s investment in initial site leveling, adding an exciting (explosive?) element to the Board’s summit tour.
Once again Business Administrator Daniel Calabrese has taken us through the maze of auditing, guiding the project successfully through its 4th consecutive A-133 federal financial audit, a critically important requirement toward receiving direct federal funding. This NSF certification review is almost complete with an announcement expected sometime in January regarding this decision. We welcome Teresa Bippert-Plymate to the Project Office, providing some much needed administrative support as the project moves forward. Teresa previously worked with the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer group as a Technical Specialist doing “a little bit of everything”. Her familiarity with astronomy is invaluable as she plows headfirst into assisting with the construction proposal.
Article written by Suzanne Jacoby and Don Sweeney
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; California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell University; Drexel University; 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 at Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; National Optical 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, Davis; University of California, 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)
- 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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