September 30, 2016 - Several members of the Telescope & Site and Systems Engineering groups were in Madrid, Spain this week for the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) Test Verification Review. This review of the verification plans for the TMA include a project milestone: the first “official” integration of a vendor subsystem with the LSST visit-simulator controls software, the software that instructs the telescope to move to a new location on the sky. This image is a screen shot documenting a standard visit sequence of moving the dome, adjusting the hexapod / actuator assembly, fixing on the guide star and then completing the exposure sequence. The Operations Simulator, OpSim, was used to provide a realistic sequence of targets, representative of a full night of LSST observing (approximately 800 visits per night).
Financial support for Rubin Observatory comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Cooperative Support Agreement No. 1202910, 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.
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