Blogs

The Rubin Operations team hosted its first Rubin Project and Community Workshop (PCW) in August 2023, after more than 15 years of annual meetings facilitated by the Rubin Construction Project. Construction leadership and many staff members were still active participants in the meeting, but this year’s agenda had a stronger focus on preparations for using Rubin data and other topics of interest to the growing Rubin science community. More than 300 people attended the meeting in person at the University Marriott in Tucson, Arizona, and an additional 160 people registered to participate virtually in plenaries and select breakout sessions.

The structure that will support the telescope’s optical system is handed over to the Rubin team

April 14, 2023 - Rubin Observatory celebrated a major construction milestone at the end of March, when the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA), the structure that will soon support the observatory’s optical system, was declared substantially complete. That designation means that testing has proven that the TMA is functioning well enough for UTE, the Spain-based consortium contracted by Rubin to build and assemble the TMA on the summit, to hand it over to the Rubin team for integration of other components.

November 16, 2022 - A productive and collaborative meeting, "LSST@Europe4 - Shaping the European Contribution to LSST," took place October 24-28 in Rome, Italy, with a high level or participation from members of the Rubin Operations and Construction teams. The meeting focused on the last phases of Rubin Construction, the transition to Operations, and on the participation of international communities in commissioning, early science, and the LSST Science Collaborations. Rubin staff members gave presentations on Construction project status, integration and commissioning, operations, In-Kind program status, and early science.

June 28, 2022 - The American Astronomical Society (AAS) offered its first hybrid conference (in-person and virtual attendance both supported) in over two years on June 8-13, in Pasadena, California, and Rubin Observatory was there! AAS 240 was one of the biggest summer meetings AAS has ever hosted, its 2022 winter meeting was scheduled to take place in Salt Lake City in January, but it was canceled at the last minute because of a spike in COVID-19 cases.

May 13, 2022 - On April 8th, the LSST Camera team at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory successfully attached the Cryostat to the Camera Body in the IR2 clean room, bringing the camera’s three primary structures—the Cryostat, the Utility Trunk, and the Camera Body—together for the first time. The Cryostat contains the camera’s 201 sensors (each one 16 megapixels), and the 28" entrance lens (L3), with the ancillary electronics and vacuum systems installed on the outside. The Camera Body will ultimately provide support for the camera shutter, filter exchange system, and the two primary lenses (L1 and L2).