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September

Flight Cerro Tololo - Cerro Pachon - LSST

LSST looks great from the air. Nice flyby video from David Walker. more

Friday, October 2, 2009
Image Credit: 
LSST

LSST organized a conference in La Serena on 29 and 30 September for Architecture and Engineering Companies that have been pre-qualified to provide proposals for the design of the LSST summit facility on Cerro Pachón. The first day of the meeting provided LSST and AURA an opportunity to present background on LSST and the management organization. The second day included a visit to the observatory including stops at the LSST site, Gemini South, and SOAR. The LSST project has required that the facility design for this important part of the project be conducted in Chile. Eight companies, mostly from Santiago, were present at the meetings. Proposals are due at the end of October. The AURA Observatory will provide LSST with the business services to contract with the selected company and will host LSST staff moving to Chile, starting this December, to monitor the technical development locally.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Image Credit: 
LSST Project Office

AURA and UCH Reach Innovative Agreement for LSST

The LSST will be built on Cerro Pachón, a mountain located on property owned by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA). AURA is permitted to operate telescopes in Chile because of an agreement reached with the Universidad de Chile (UCH) at the time Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory was established. AURA and UCH, in close consultation with LSST Corp. (LSSTC), have now extended that agreement to cover operations of the LSST. “The goal of all the parties engaged in the negotiation was to ensure that the principles for operation of the LSST would enable full participation of Chilean astronomers in all aspects of the LSST project from planning to analysis of the data,” says Sidney Wolff, LSSTC President.

May

Site Panorama

May 2006 Panorama showing Cerro Pachón, future site of the LSST Telescope
Movie icon CP_El_Penon.mov

LSST Site Transfer

LSST Summit Facility general contractor, Besalco, has officially taken possession of the Cerro Pachon site in order to begin the construction effort. Going forward, the LSST site now is an active construction site with all of the consequent safety rules and restrictions in effect. In particular, access to the site by project personnel now must be pre-approved by Besalco. Besalco began work in January 2015, mobilizing personnel and equipment and establishing offices and a warehouse on the summit. They are working with their subcontractor Rocterra to remove the final 20,000 cubic meters of material. Excavation for the telescope pier foundation and construction of the road to the telescope main platform are nearing completion. The platform for the calibration telescope is complete.

Webcam Offers Views

The lsst.org Gallery now has a page dedicated to images from a recently reactivated webcam with a view of the LSST site on the Cerro Pachon summit. The images provide a window onto the summit facilities’ construction progress. The web page image refreshes every minute; also available are time lapse animations - one with a series of images captured at hourly intervals and one with each image captured at the one-minute interval.

Financial support for Rubin Observatory comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Cooperative Agreement No. 1258333, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515, and private funding raised by the LSST Corporation. The NSF-funded Rubin Observatory Project Office for construction was established as an operating center under management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).  The DOE-funded effort to build the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera (LSSTCam) is managed by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.
NSF and DOE will continue to support Rubin Observatory in its Operations phase. They will also provide support for scientific research with LSST data.   




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