Announcements 2017

22 February 2017: On February 17th Gemini reached another significant milestone with the celebration of the official handover to Base Facility Operations (BFO) at Gemini South. It took more than 2 years to complete this important step and involved all departments from Gemini South. About a year ago, Gemini North reached the same milestone, so now both Gemini telescopes operate routinely from the base facilities in La Serena, Chile and Hilo, Hawai‘i. Atsuko Nitta, the BFO Project lead adds, ”... although we’ve been operating fully remotely at Gemini South since mid-November of last year, we have now signed off on all BFO work packages and it’s official – both Gemini telescopes are remotely operational!” Atsuko also notes that this move has a profound impact on our nighttime operations (with no losses in data acquisition or on-sky observing efficiencies). The move to BFO also significantly improves our environmental stewardship mostly due to fewer trips …

17 February 2017: Project News New drone images from the summit of Cerro Pachón show the rapid progress of LSST construction. You can see the circular lower enclosure with the telescope pier inside, the elevator shaft, and the (long rectangular) service building. The third image shows white siding going up on the lower enclosure and progress on the foundation for the Auxiliary Telescope. Inside the facilities building windows are appearing, drywall is going up and cable trays are being installed. The summit team has one month to get ready for the start of Dome installation. Telescopes in the background are (L-R) SOAR, and Gemini South. Thanks to LSST Telescope & Site Assembly, Integration, and Verification (AIV) Manager Jacques Sebag for obtaining these pictures during a recent visit. A paper entitled "The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope as a Near-Earth Object Discovery Machine” by Lynne Jones et al. has been submitted to Icarus, a peer-reviewed …

7 February 2017: Gemini follows up on candidate galaxies with fading active galactic nuclei (AGN) first identified thanks to the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. Researchers find that these galaxies show a significant reduction in ionizing photons within the last 20,000 years. Additionally, the gas clouds around these fading AGN are dominated by rotation, unlike those around radio-loud AGN, which are outflows coming from the nuclei. William C. Keel (University of Alabama) and his collaborators used Hα narrowband filters on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in conjunction with multi-object spectroscopy with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) integral-field unit (IFU) on the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea to observe a set of fading active galactic nuclei (AGN). These fading AGN, identified in the Galaxy Zoo project, appear to have experienced a significant reduction in luminosity within 20,000 years or less based on this research. This work focused on nine AGN which are accompanied by …

3 February 2017: Project News The AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) met this week in Tucson. The AMCL meets three times a year, and is AURA's oversight and advocacy committee for LSST. Steve Kahn, Beth Willman, Victor Krabbendam, and Chuck Claver presented on topics related to LSST construction progress, commissioning planning, and operations planning. LSST Systems Engineers Kathryn Wesson and Brian Selvy attended the NASA JPL Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Symposium and Workshop and then the 2017 INCOSE International Workshop last week. They had the opportunity to collaborate with systems engineers from NASA JPL, TMT, and GMT, and were able to interact with vendors of software tools used by LSST such as MagicDraw and Syndeia. The systems engineers from GMT, TMT, and LSST agreed to continue collaborating on developing modeling capabilities of mutual benefit to all projects, with the long term goal of developing a reference model for large, ground based …

3 February 2017: Over 200 students from six Tucson high schools recently built Galileoscopes, small mass-produced telescopes that offer an inexpensive way to view the same celestial objects studied by Galileo. The telescope-building event, part of the MathMovesU program, was led by Raytheon Engineers and the UA Early Academic Office in partnership with NOAO and the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. The MathMovesU program aims to inspire students to consider majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields in college and to pursue STEM careers. Local media coverage of the event:

27 January 2017: Project News The joint DOE/NSF LSST Commissioning Review took place this week at SLAC. This review included a comprehensive assessment of the scope, cost, schedule, organization, and funding profile proposed for LSST Commissioning. The maturity of plans to transition from commissioning to operations, and plans for the Environment, Safety, and Health aspects of commissioning were also evaluated. The review went very well – The team received both helpful recommendations from an excellent review panel and compliments for their preparedness for the review. With this week’s NSF approval, construction has begun on the expansion and renovation of the AURA and NOAO-S base facility in La Serena, Chile to accommodate LSST and also make improvements for NOAO and AURA. The first phase of the work includes site preparation and renovation of the existing buildings. The second phase of the work will involve construction of a new 2-story office building and a separate …

25 January 2017: It is good time to be an exoplanet hunter… or just an exoplanet enthusiast for that matter! Every few weeks, it seems, new discoveries are being announced which present more exciting opportunities for scientific research. But even more exciting is the fact that every new find increases the likelihood of locating a potentially habitable planet (and hence, life) outside of our Solar System. And with the discovery of LHS 1140b – a super-Earth located approximately 39 light years from Earth – exoplanet hunters think they have found the most likely candidate for habitability to date. Not only does this terrestrial (i.e. rocky) planet orbit within its sun’s habitable zone, but examinations of the planet (using the transit method) have revealed that it appears to have a viable atmosphere. Credit for the discovery goes to a team of international scientists who used the MEarth-South telescope array – a robotic observatory located …

20 January 2017: Project News Two new videos are available on the LSST Image Gallery https://www.lsst.org/gallery/videos. One is an updated version of the video we show at meetings such as AAS. The other is our 2nd “Day in the Life of LSST Construction” video. This is our second in a series of slides shows with captions that will capture LSST construction activities over the lifetime of the project. Registration has opened for the LSST Joint Technical Meeting, the annual gathering of technical project staff to work face-to-face on issues that cross subsystem boundaries. Both commissioning and operations planning will be major topics at this year’s meeting. Next week’s joint DOE/NSF LSST Commissioning Review takes place at SLAC, and many team members will participate in person. Commissioning is the period when the LSST Observatory systems are integrated, tested, characterized, and then verified against technical and scientific performance requirements. The LSST Information Technology Services Committee …

13 January 2017: Project News The New Year is off to a vigorous start with both a meeting of the Data Management Leadership Team (DMLT) and a dry run for the upcoming Commissioning Review taking place in Tucson this week. The DMLT meets face-to-face quarterly; the Commissioning Review takes place January 24 – 26 at SLAC. Installation of the fiber-optic cable from the AURA Gatehouse in La Serena to Cerro Pachón is nearing completion. LSST had a strong presence at AAS 229 in Grapevine, TX, last week with a booth on the exhibit hall floor, participation in the Career Fair and Networking Event, and an LSST Town Hall. At the Town Hall, Beth Willman, Pat Eliason, and Lucianne Walkowicz spoke to the crowd of ~160 about the LSST Project, Corporation, and Science Collaboration activities. Presentations are available through Zenodo at this shortened URL: http://ls.st/e4i Personnel News Brian Selvy has been promoted to the …

13 January 2017: Thanks to scientists on the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the solar system just got another member. DES scientists recently reported the discovery of a potential dwarf planet located 92 times farther from the sun than the Earth is, more than twice as distant as Pluto. The new dwarf planet was discovered using the Dark Energy Camera, a scientific instrument built at Fermilab to probe the mystery of dark energy. But as scientists on the DES collaboration can attest, DECam turns out to be a powerful tool for astronomy as well as cosmology. The newly discovered object, which the team has nicknamed DeeDee (for “distant dwarf”), is for now known as 2014 UZ224. DeeDee takes more than 1,100 years to complete one orbit around our sun and is currently the second-most distant known object in the solar system. Light from DeeDee takes 12-and-a-half hours to reach us. DeeDee is one of …

9 January 2017: Artificial light at night is a threat to astronomical research, personal safety, and the health of humans and wildlife. To address the challenge posed by the proliferating use of LEDs for billboards and street lighting, NOAO, in partnership with other concerned organizations, recently convened a workshop to showcase successful strategies for reducing light pollution. The workshop was held at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) where the AAS Council announced a three-part resolution on light pollution, including calling on all AAS members to protect dark skies in their communities.