SCIENCE UPDATE
LSST to Solicit Applications for Scientists to join Science Collaborations
Tony Tyson, LSST Director
LSST will have a scientific impact on fields ranging from studies of asteroids in the Solar System to the nature of dark energy. To manage the science investigations, LSST established a series of Science Collaborations, semi-autonomous groups of scientists drawn from the astronomy and high-energy physics communities. 179 scientists from the LSST project team and member institutions have signed on already. They are laying the detailed groundwork to carry out scientific investigations once LSST commissioning begins in 2014. This spring LSST will begin to solicit applications for additional scientists to join the existing science collaborations. Membership in these collaborations is open to the US astronomical and high-energy physics communities. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) will oversee the proposal process.
The Science Collaborations work with the LSST team on various aspects of survey design, science tradeoffs, software pipelines and database design. Together they are developing code and other analysis techniques to allow them to take full advantage of the data once it starts to flow, and are planning precursor or follow-up observations using other facilities needed to meet their scientific goals. The collaborators will take the lead in carrying out science investigations with early data from the LSST, to commission the system and reveal subtle problems in the data.
There currently are ten science collaborations chaired by researchers of the member institutions:
- Supernovae: M. Wood-Vasey (CfA)
- Weak lensing: D. Wittman (UC Davis) and B. Jain (UPenn)
- Stellar Populations: Abi Saha (NOAO)
- Active Galactic Nuclei: Niel Brandt (Penn State)
- Solar System: Steve Chesley (JPL)
- Galaxies: Harry Ferguson (STScI)
- Transients/variable stars: Shri Kulkarni (Caltech)
- Large-scale Structure/baryon oscillations: Hu Zhan (UC Davis)
- Milky Way Structure: James Bullock (UC Irvine)
- Strong gravitational lensing: Phil Marshall (UCSB)
LSST also invites the scientific community to submit ideas for additional science collaborations. Please contact Michael Strauss strauss@astro.princeton.edu to do so.
For more information, contact Michael Strauss, Chair Science Advisory Committee
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