Blogs

Cryostat Testing in Tucson

Comments

May 21, 2018 - The Auxiliary Telescope for LSST has arrived safely on the summit of Cerro Pachon, and its heaviest parts have been lifted into its enclosure building by crane. Meanwhile, in Tucson, preparations are being made for the assembly and testing of the calibration equipment that will be mounted on the Auxiliary Telescope (AT) in order to measure atmospheric transmission during LSST operations (as described in this recent news item). In early May, twenty-three shipping boxes containing the cryostat and associated peripherals arrived at the Project Office workshop in Tucson. The cryostat contains the sensor that will be used to image spectra from the AT’s spectrograph.

Getting Connected on the Summit

Comments

May 14, 2018 - A major milestone has been reported from Cerro Pachón: installation of the first summit network equipment took place at the beginning of May. After readying the summit computer room, which included ensuring the space was appropriately clean and temperature-controlled, the IT team began installing servers in this space, which will serve as the central hub of communications on Cerro Pachón.

TMA Safety Review

Comments

May 4, 2018 - An LSST team spent 5 days in Spain last month conducting a thorough safety review of the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) at the facility of vendor Asturfeito. LSST Safety Manager Chuck Gessner, Telescope and Site Technical Manager Shawn Callahan, Senior Systems Engineer Austin Roberts, and Lead Electrical Engineer Oliver Wiecha inspected the numerous safety features included in the TMA, and reviewed the procedures by which the group of vendors responsible for building the TMA (referred to as UTE) will verify that the hazard mitigations meet LSST requirements.

A Path to Success

Comments

April 26, 2018 – An LSST cross-project team met at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) earlier this month to conduct the latest in a series of Early Integration Pathfinder Activities. This activity focused on simulated control and image collection for the nominal Auxiliary Telescope visit sequence. The exercise was the culmination of intense effort from a distributed group of LSST project members, and it offered the opportunity for participants representing different subsystems to align expectations, resolve issues, and determine priorities for next steps.

Lighting up the LSST Fiber Optic Network: From Summit to Base to Archive

Comments

April 11, 2018 - The LSST Network Engineering Team is pleased to announce the first successful transfer of digital data over LSST/AURA 100 gigabit per second fiber optic networks from the Summit Site on Cerro Pachón, Chile to the Base Site in La Serena, Chile and on to the Archive Site at NCSA in Champaign, IL. This event took place in December 2017 and demonstrated not only performance and continuity across all hardware segments of the network, but a well-coordinated effort by multiple international engineering teams in support of LSST.

LSST Ring of Fiber Connectivity Completed

Comments

April 4, 2018 - With the completion of two additional 100Gbps “points of presence,” LSST now has a redundant, high-speed, fiber-optic network between Santiago, Chile, and Miami, Florida. This is the international portion of the network for transferring data from the summit of Cerro Pachón to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, some 8000 kilometers (nearly 5000 miles) away. The additional connectivity in Santiago, Chile, and Fortaleza, Brazil, was installed in late February and early March, 2018, and completed the ring shown in yellow in the accompanying figure.

A Key Event

Comments

March 23, 2018 - After three years of construction work on Cerro Pachón, general contractor Besalco Construcciones achieved substantial completion of the LSST Summit Facility on February 28, 2018. On that date, the building keys were officially turned over to LSST Construction Inspector Jaime Seriche and LSST Site Manager Eduardo Serrano. Although 20-30 Besalco workers will remain on-site for a few more weeks, addressing punch list tasks, LSST now has authority over the occupation of the facility and the site work schedule. Current activity in the building includes IT equipment installation, furnishing of offices, and post-construction projects for various LSST subsystems.

Balancing Act

Comments

March 9, 2018 - Exciting progress took place in February at subcontractor Asturfeito in Spain, where personnel assigned to the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) engaged in balancing and metrology activities.

Although LSST’s telescope will eventually be controlled by computers, current balancing activities require a manual approach in which the telescope, while floating on oil, is moved by winches. Measurements of the force on the telescope are taken to ensure the telescope is balanced whenever it’s off-zenith. This video, taken during the balancing of the elevation structure, illustrates the process.

Cruise with LSST in 2018

Comments

February 27, 2018 - In calendar year 2018, almost $100M of equipment will be transported to Cerro Pachón from the U.S. and around the world for integration into the LSST summit facility building. Major items include the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA), the Coating Chamber, the Dome, the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) and Secondary Mirror (M2), the mirror cells, and the hexapod rotator (with its twin spare). These items will be gathered from several locations, including Rochester, NY; Tucson, AZ; Denver, CO; Italy, Spain, and Germany, and shipped to the Chilean port of Coquimbo for ground transport to the summit. The designer of much of the complex, but flexible, logistics program is LSST Principal Surveyor Michael Logue.

EPO Team Hosts Teacher Focus Group

Comments

February 16, 2018 - An Education and Public Outreach (EPO) focus group for teachers was held in Tucson on February 3-4. Led by LSST Education Specialist Ardis Herrold, the event gathered 11 high school and college educators from across the U.S. to solicit feedback on prototypes of the online educator tools, including Jupyter Notebook-based interactive astronomy investigations, currently being developed by the EPO team. Opinions provided by the participants will help guide future stages of EPO product development, ensuring the continued alignment of EPO products with educator needs.

Pages

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 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.   




Contact   |   Employment   |   LSST Corporation

Admin Login

Back to Top