LSST Science Advisory Committee phonecon July 2, 2014 Attending: Michael Strauss (Chair), Rachel Mandelbaum, Harry Ferguson, Jason Kalirai, Lisa Hunter, Michael Wood-Vasey, Niel Brandt, Steve Kahn, Beth Willman, Mansi Kasliwal, Renu Malhotra, Lucianne Walkowicz Regrets: Bhuvnesh Jain ********Status of LSST project Steve: We have not yet started the NSF cooperative agreement for construction. The NSF financial office has been drilling down on the LSST budget, worrying about details such as overhead rates at different institutions. We thought we would be done with this whole process by this time, allowing us to formally start the construction project on July 1 (i.e., yesterday); we're now reasonably hopeful it will be done by July 15, at which time a public announcement/press release will be made. There is also an ongoing issue with the Office of the Inspector General, about the proper way to assess contingency on big scientific projects. But this is unlikely to delay us. In the meantime, a lot of major hardware contracts have been competed, including the sensors, the telescope mount assembly, the hexapod supporting the mirrors, the secondary polishing, the camera sensors, and the site facility in Chile. The big remaining hardware item is the dome. With the imminent start of construction, a personnel hiring campaign has started. This has involved, among other things, a high-profile presence at various relevant meetings, such as the SPIE meeting last week in Montreal. This campaign includes hiring some high-level folks such as the Survey Scientist, Telescope Scientist, and Deputy Director. ***Status of Science Collaborations: I (Michael Strauss) am in the process of talking to the (co-)chairs of all the science collaborations, to see where things stand. Once those conversations are done, I will send around a summary of what I've learned. The LSST Project is no longer controlling the membership of the science collaborations: each collaboration is responsible for deciding its own membership policy/application process, with the only requirement that applicants must have LSST data rights. This includes: -All people working at US and Chilean institutions. -Those named individuals at international institutions that have signed an Memorandum of Agreement with the LSSTC to support construction funds. (The list of such people, which continues to grow, is kept by Daniel Calabrese of the LSST Project Office; it should be kept on the website, and distributed to the science collaboration chairs.) The current science collaborations represent a mixture of those with lots of energy, and those that are effectively dormant, with little going on. We agreed that in any given science area, there are certainly things that the science collaborations should be doing to prepare for first light: they are not going to be able to hit the ground running without a lot of work between then and now. Each science collaboration should ask themselves: where do we want to be at the beginning of datataking? What science will we be able to do with the Level 2 tools, and what further will we need to develop? Moreover, it really does not look good to the scientific community (especially the international partners) if they see that certain science collaborations are dormant. I will Funding is of course key to making these activities happen. LSSTC is exploring the possibility of raising funds to support LSST science activities (as developed by its Enabling Science subcommittee) from private donors and foundations. The NSF, DOE, and NASA all represent potential national sources of funds. Of course, attracting funds requires making a compelling science case; nobody will fund a project without a compelling, and detailed, plan. It is in this context that various of the science collaborations are preparing roadmaps. For example, Lucianne reported that the transients/variable stars group is starting to map out the work that needs to be done; this can become support for funding proposals, that can point to the priorities that the resulting document outline. Harry has similarly started a roadmap process covering several of the extragalactic science collaborations. He has support from the Enabling Science committee for travel expenses for a group of people to work on this. This led to a discussion of how to motivate work on Solar System science. Renu reported that a group of Near Earth Asteroid folks are planning a breakout session on this topic at the LSST2014 meeting in Phoenix. One of the reasons that the Solar System community has not embraced LSST is the mistaken belief that decisions about cadence have been finalized, and are not ideal for minor planet studies. This is not true, and the LSST project needs to do a better job of communicating things like this to the general public. One way to do so would be to have an LSST presence (a booth?) at the upcoming DPS meeting (in Tucson, the week of November 9); http://aas.org/meetings/dps46 . Debbie Kovalsky, debbie.kovalsky@aas.org, is the contact person for this. Steve was enthusiastic about the idea, and will talk to Zeljko Ivezic about the possibility of him attending the meeting. This led to a discussion of the LSST website; there is nowhere presently on it a clear discussion of the status of the cadence, and the opportunities for community input on modifying it. The website is a key mechanism for communication between LSST and the community. It is indeed in the process of undergoing a major rehaul; I will ask Suzanne Jacoby about the current timeline for that. **********LSST, Space Missions, and the Optical/Infrared System WFIRST is increasingly likely to happen (launch date of 2023?), and Euclid is scheduled to launch in 2020. The scientific and technical synergy of these two projects with LSST are obvious. There was an informal one-day workshop on June 20, talking about the possibilities. A white paper is being developed, which will go to policy makers in Washington with the hope of stimulating funding for joint LSST/WFIRST analyses. Given that the operations of Euclid, WFIRST, and LSST will all overlap in time, we can also imagine coordinated cadences between them, which may be particularly valuable for transient observations of various sources. The WFIRST and Euclid situations are different. WFIRST is NASA-funded, and thus a WFIRST-LSST joint analysis would be open to the whole US community. Euclid is a European mission: Euclid data are not public to most of the US community, and LSST data are not public to most of the LSST community. We could imagine a self-formed collaboration of Europeans and Americans to propose for resources to jointly process the data and deliver photometric redshifts to the community. We can/should encourage such a development, but need to communicate this opportunity clearly to the community. More broadly, the community is starting to think about synergy between all the facilities that will be operational in the 2020's, including JWST, GMT and TMT. It is time to develop a coherent view of how these resources can be used jointly. We need to think through use cases for ambitious science projects that will need access to data from multiple facilities. Beth described a workshop proposal she and others have submitted to the Aspen Center for Physics, that among other things, would develop such use cases in the realm of near-field cosmology. There is a National Research Council task force charged with thinking about the O/IR system in the 2020's, which of course includes LSST. The Kavli foundation is planning a workshop on the same topic, perhaps as erly as September. And a number of individual observatories are sponsoring similar meetings; there is one coming up for the TMT community in just a few weeks, and JWST is thinking about a series of workshops on various science themes. This is a big topic; we should return to it in future meetings. ************LSST2014 in Phoenix This meeting (the week of August 11) will bring together the LSST community, and is a good opportunity to have a face-to-face meeting of the SAC. From what the members of the SAC have told me thus far, -Seven of you are likely to come -Three of you cannot make it -One of you does not know yet. -Four haven't responded to this question (I'll send you pointed e-mail on this question separately!) The schedule for the meeting is pretty full. Indeed, it is really two parallel meetings going on simultaneously: the main meeting (with parallel sessions) and a cadence workshop. We should hold our face-to-face meeting near the end of the week: the schedule loosens up a bit then, and we will have had the opportunity to hear, and take part in discussions on, all the various topics discussed through the week. A possibility is to hold our SAC meeting on Friday afternoon, April 15, after the main meetings have ended. This is not ideal: at least a few of the SAC members say that they can't be there that day. Moreover, there is more to talk about than we can possibly cover even in a full day. We more-or-less agreed that we would make this meeting focused on a single topic, recognizing that additional topics can be covered in future phonecons and face-to-face meetings (we are supported for travel to two such face-to-face meetings each year). The topic suggested was to discuss the process by which decisions will be made on the survey cadence. The cadence workshop that will precede this discussion will focus on the scientific question of what the ideal cadence(s) would be for a given scientific area; the SAC meeting would then ask: who decides? How are the decisions actually made? The deadline for registering for LSST2014, and signing up for hotels, is July 11, so please register soon! Please see https://project.lsst.org/meetings/lsst2014/ for more details. If we hold a face-to-face meeting of this group there, as I hope we will, the project will cover your travel expenses. Action items from this meeting and previous meetings: -Get all SAC members on Docushare. Michael will talk to Iain Goodenow. -Steve will talk to Zeljko about taking part in the upcoming DPS meeting. -Michael will ask Suzanne about the timeline for the new and improved website. -Finalize timing of next face-to-face meeting -Everyone should register for the LSST2014 meeting. -Develop LSST SAC website, and make it public. The minutes from previous meetings are currently available, at https://www.lsstcorp.org/groups/sac/meetings -Write an announcement of the SAC for the AAS newsletter, and develop a mechanism (perhaps through the above website) for people to give input.