Announcements 2018

18 December 2018: Project & Science News Happy holidays and best wishes for the New Year from LSST! The next LSST News Digest will be distributed on January 15th, 2019. LSST will have representation at the 233rd AAS Meeting in Seattle, WA, January 7-10. If you’ll be attending the meeting and would like to help staff the LSST exhibitor booth (#113), or our Job Fair table (January 8, Noon-6:30 pm), please email us at communications-team@lists.lsst.org. We also encourage you to attend the LSST Town Hall on January 9th at 7:30 pm in room 6C. The latest LSST “Day in the Life” video is now available in the LSST Gallery, the fourth in a series that highlights the diversity of efforts undertaken by our distributed team. Thanks to everyone who contributed photos—keep up the good work. An update from the PLAsTiCC Astronomical Classification Challenge: The final submission deadline for the main Kaggle prize has …

17 December 2018: Extremely high-resolution speckle observations by Gemini South deliver critical details on a star (or stars) lying in the apparent path of remnants from the early formation of our Solar System. In early March of 2017 the outer Solar System object Orcus, and its one known satellite Vanth, were on an apparent collision course with a star – at least that’s the way it appeared from our perspective on Earth. Original calculations showed that Orcus would pass in front of a relatively bright star and temporarily block the star’s light. However, later refinements to the calculations revealed that the shadow of Vanth would trace a path across the Earth’s surface. These events, known as occultations, are only visible from a thin swath on Earth’s surface and calculations have small uncertainties due to observations of the orbits and estimates of the objects’ size. But even with these uncertainties, what happened surprised astronomers. …

15 December 2018: Gemini Observatory announces the opportunity for new Large and Long Programs, with observations beginning in the 2019B semester. Letters of Intent to propose a new Large and Long Program are due February 4, 2019. Completed Proposals are due April 1, 2019.

14 December 2018: Astronomers have announced the discovery of the most distant body ever observed in our Solar System. Nicknamed “Farout” for its extremely distant location, the new dwarf planet 2018 VG18 is 120 times further from the Sun than Earth (i.e., at 120 AU). In comparison, the dwarf planet Eris is at 96 AU and Pluto is currently at 34 AU. The discovery was made by astronomers Scott Sheppard, David Tholen, and Chad Trujillo as part of a survey of the outer Solar System carried out in part with observing time made available through NOAO.

4 December 2018: Project & Science News An attractive and functional LSST 2019 wall calendar is now available; pick one up at the LSST booth at the AAS Meeting in Seattle, January 7-10, or print your own copy by downloading the image from the LSST Gallery. We would like to extend our appreciation for the hard work put in by the LSST community in response to the Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization. We received 46 white papers that will help us explore variations on the survey strategy over the next two years. The LSST Science Advisory Committee are now starting their review, leading to recommendations on how to go forth when simulating these survey strategy options. The December 17th deadline is approaching for the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC), and over 800 participating teams have registered so far. Learn more about the challenge in this video, recorded at …

3 December 2018: Work on the camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), bound for Cerro Pachon in Chile, recently reached a major milestone with the completion of the camera’s refrigeration system (a.k.a. its cryostat). Equipped with 3.2 gigapixels, the camera is the largest ever built for ground-based astronomy. NOAO is a founding partner of LSST and is developing tools and systems to support community research with LSST.

20 November 2018: Project & Science News The LSST Project Office wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving holiday! The LSST Coating Chamber arrived on the summit of Cerro Pachón on November 11, safely completing a 15-week journey from Deggendorf, Germany, where it was constructed. The 128-ton Coating Chamber has now been integrated into the summit facility. Photos of the Coating Chamber during shipping, and upon arrival at the summit, are available in the LSST Gallery. The LSST Secondary Mirror (M2) System cargo was loaded aboard the BBC Challenger on November 12th at the port of Albany, NY. The ship departed for Chile the following day, heading back down the Hudson River. The vessel will travel nearly directly to the port of Coquimbo, Chile, and is due to arrive at the beginning of December. Preparations are underway to accommodate the mirror and associated cargo boxes on Cerro Pachón. Photos of M2 being loaded are available …

20 November 2018: Astronomers have discovered a large, extremely diffuse galaxy companion to the Milky Way. As big as the Large Magellanic Cloud but 10,000 times fainter, the galaxy has eluded us until now because of its faint, “ghostly” appearance and its hiding place behind the disk of the Milky Way. The discovery was made with the Gaia satellite and archival data from DECam on the CTIO Blanco telescope. Astronomers want to know: is this galaxy an oddball?...or one of many “ghostly” companions yet to be found? Long press or hover your mouse over the image above to view a labeled version.

13 November 2018: Pluto’s terrain shows a “washboard” pattern of fine ridges just north of its great frozen nitrogen sea, Sputnik Planitia. A recent study by the New Horizons team argues that the ridges are deposits of water ice left behind as an ancient frozen nitrogen glacier that once covered the area sublimed away. Water-ice is buoyant in nitrogen ice and is expected to collect in pits formed on the surface of the glacier as the nitrogen sublimes. NOAO Astronomer Tod Lauer is a coauthor on the study.

6 November 2018: Project & Science News A reminder: daylight saving time ended in the U.S. on Sunday, November 4th. The LSST Project uses Pacific Time as a standard, but Arizona clocks do not change, and Chile is on a different time change schedule. As a result, standing meeting times have changed for people in some locations but not others; please check with your meeting organizer to confirm the times for upcoming meetings. The deadline for the Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization is less than a month away; white papers must be submitted by November 30, 2018. Click here for more information. The LSST Coating Chamber arrived at the Port of Coquimbo, Chile, on October 23rd, ending a seven-week ocean voyage that began in Antwerp, Belgium. For four days after its arrival, the Coating Chamber was prepared, split into two pieces (top and bottom), and loaded onto specialized transport vehicles …

30 October 2018: Astronomers have discovered that the tiny Sextans dwarf galaxy, which is 100,000 times less massive than the Milky Way, is undergoing a merger with an even smaller companion galaxy. While large galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to form through mergers with smaller galaxies, the new result illustrates how even the smallest galaxies may form that way. The discovery was made with data from the 4-m Blanco Telescope at CTIO.

23 October 2018: Project & Science News Early in the morning on October 10, the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) Cell was moved from CAID Industries, where it was manufactured, to the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab on the University of Arizona campus. The Cell traveled on a vehicle provided by Precision Heavy Haul (PHH); personnel from PHH, CAID, the Mirror Lab, and LSST Project members made sure the Cell was transported and delivered safely. More information about the Cell move can be found in this recent news item. A week later, on October 18, the M1M3 Mirror was also moved to the Mirror Lab on a PHH truck. The Mirror had been in storage in a hangar at Million Air since its fabrication, which was completed in 2015. Now that both the Cell and the Mirror are in the Lab, the next step is the installation of the Mirror onto the M1M3 Cell using …

22 October 2018: Discovered in part with DECam at CTIO, a new dwarf planet patrols the outer Solar System on a highly elongated orbit: it travels within 65 AU of the Sun at closest approach and as far away as 1000 AU. With its distant orbit, the small planet (300 kilometers in diameter) is sensitive to the dynamics at the edge of the Solar System — and the presence of more massive outer Solar System planets, such as the hypothetical Planet X.

18 October 2018: July 2nd 2019 will be a very special day in South America. On that day a total eclipse will travel from west to east across the continent and, in a spectacular stroke of astronomical luck, will pass directly over the National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile – one of the most famous astronomy sites in the world. Cerro Tololo is a complex of astronomical telescopes and instruments located at an altitude of 7200 feet and part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). Science experiments conducted during a solar eclipse contribute rare and valuable data to our understanding of the Sun and its corona. Given the fortuitous passage of the eclipse path, AURA decided to open up the Cerro Tololo site to eclipse astronomers from around the world through a competition judged by solar physics experts from the National Solar Observatory. International teams of scientists applied for …

16 October 2018: Thanks to two allocations of Director’s Discretionary Time and a successful Fast-Turnaround program, an international team (including Gemini Emeritus Astronomer Tom Geballe, who wrote this summary on behalf of the team) used Gemini North/GNIRS to follow the evolution of the near-infrared spectrum of the core-collapse supernova 2017eaw (ccSN 2017eaw) over three semesters. The data obtained from this relatively nearby event may help us to better understand the existence of dusty galaxies in the early, much more distant Universe. One of the unexpected discoveries in studies of the very early Universe is that many high redshift galaxies are “dusty.” These dusty galaxies exist as recently as several hundred million to a billion years after the Big Bang. The origin of this dust is somewhat of a mystery, because stars with masses similar to the Sun, which constitute the vast majority of stars in a galaxy, would not have evolved to the …

15 October 2018: NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a “hot Earth” in orbit around a star 45 light years away. The planet, which is only 30% larger than Earth, orbits very close to its star, with a period of just 11 hours. The discovery was confirmed using multiple facilities including the CHIRON spectrograph on the SMARTS 1.5m telescope at CTIO.

10 October 2018: Project & Science News A group from the National Science Foundation (NSF) paid a productive visit to the LSST summit site on Cerro Pachón in late September to review construction progress and interact with LSST Project senior management staff. A group photo from the event is available in the LSST Gallery. The Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia (LIneA) in Brazil held a meeting of the LSST Brazil Participation Group (BPG) on Sept 24-28. Representatives from LSST Data Management (DM), Communications, and Education and Public Outreach (EPO) were invited to present progress on their efforts, and to review the LIneA science and technical activities. A group photo from the event is available in the LSST Gallery, and the LSST presentations can be found at this link. The transport cart for the Primary/Tertiary Mirror (M1M3) Cell Assembly has been completed at CAID Industries in Tucson, AZ. On the summit of Cerro Pachón, this …

28 September 2018: A nine-hour exposure of the McMath-Pierce Solar Facility on Kitt Peak. The normally white building appears red due to high altitude haze following the 1991 eruptions of Mount Pinatubo. No filters or multiple exposures were used. Credit: Bill Livingston & NOAO/AURA/NSF. A new $4.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been awarded to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) for the development of a new “Windows on the Universe Center for Astronomy Outreach” at NSF’s Kitt Peak National Observatory. Located in the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope facility, an iconic structure that was once the world’s largest solar observatory, the center will provide the public with a new way to experience the cutting-edge research being carried out at Kitt Peak and NSF’s other astronomy facilities around the globe, including ground-based optical, radio, solar, and gravitational wave facilities. New Windows on the Universe for the Public The …

26 September 2018: Project & Science News The LSST Project Office is delighted to announce that Professor Zeljko Ivezic of the University of Washington has agreed to take on the role of Deputy Director of the LSST Construction Project, effective September 1, 2018. Read the announcement from Steve Kahn here. LSST Senior Management staff recently participated in a productive quarterly meeting of AURA’s Management Council for LSST (AMCL), which took place September 5-6 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. Agenda items included an introduction of new members of the Council, and a discussion of the results of the recent NSF/DOE Joint Status Review for LSST. The Call for White Papers on LSST Cadence Optimization is still open; provide your input on LSST observing strategy by submitting before the November 30, 2018 deadline. Click here for more information. New photos of the LSST cryostat assembly, completed at SLAC in late June, are now …

19 September 2018: Multi-conjugate adaptive optics technology at Gemini South reveals that young galaxies, with large amounts of star formation, and actively growing central black holes, were relatively compact in the early Universe. A team of astronomers led by Dr. Mark Lacy (National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA) used advanced adaptive optics on the Gemini South telescope in Chile to obtain high-resolution near-infrared images of three fields from the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS). Their sample includes several ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) which the Herschel Space Observatory found to be undergoing large bursts of star formation within the first few billion years of the Big Bang. Such galaxies have hundreds of times the infrared luminosity of a normal galaxy such as the Milky Way. The high-resolution GeMS images reveal that the ULIRGs have messy, irregular structures indicating that they are the product of recent galactic interactions and mergers. Lacy explains, “The fact that …