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Jones, R. Lynne

Publications and source records attributed to Jones, R. Lynne.

8 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

PSTN-055: Survey Cadence Optimization Committee's Phase 2 Recommendations

This document describes the recommendations formulated by the Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC) of Vera C. Rubin Observatory for the observing strategy of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). These "Phase 2" recommendations follow the initial "Phase 1" recommendations released in December 2021 as PSTN-053, and convey the current recommendations for the initial implementation of the LSST. These recommendations are based on the SCOC analysis of LSST simulations generated according to PSTN-053 and the feedback received from the scientific community on those simulations. These recommendations should be considered as the current guidance for implementing the LSST observing survey at the start of the survey, a strategy to be reviewed regularly over the survey lifetime, and are accompanied by a simulation, baseline_v3.0, which represents a specific implementation of these recommendations. While these recommendations dramatically narrow the possible LSST observing parameter choices, we emphasize that at this stage they do not yet represent a final or complete set of recommendations for the survey strategy, and several details are still to be refined. Furthermore, the strategy should be considered "living" and subject to evolution throughout the survey. The SCOC continues to engage with the community to finalize its recommendations. At the time of the release of this document, the final phases of construction of Rubin Observatory are ongoing with an expected first light in mid-2024. We expect the SCOC recommendations to be revised as needed, as knowledge of the system as built and the outcome of commissioning and Science Verification mature. This document describes the Phase 2 SCOC recommendations —highlighting elements that can be considered final and elements that remain to be finalized—, the process through which the SCOC has converged on these recommendations, and the working plan for the SCOC starting in January 2023 through the start of the survey to finalize the initial implementation of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

PSTN-053: Survey Cadence Optimization Committee's Phase 1 Recommendations

This document is authored by the Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC), guided by the community input, and it will serve as a roadmap for the concluding round of survey cadence simulations. These simulations, to be delivered during early calendar year 2022, will inform the phase 2 survey strategy recommendation which will define the baseline strategy for starting the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The phase 2 SCOC recommendation will be delivered to the Rubin Observatory Operations Director before the end of calendar year 2022.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

PSTN-054: Updated estimates of the Rubin system throughput and expected LSST image depth

This document presents updated estimates, as of May 2022, of the Rubin system throughput and compares them to throughput requirements from the LSST Science Requirements Document. In addition, it uses these estimates to forecast LSST's median single-visit and co-added image depths for the current (OpSim v2.0) baseline LSST cadence simulation: (23.8, 24.5, 24.0, 23.4, 22.7, 22.0) and (25.6, 26.9, 26.9, 26.4, 25.6, 24.8) in ugrizy, respectively. In addition, it uses these estimates to forecast LSST’s median single-visit and co-added image depths for the current baseline LSST cadence simulation. Estimated system performance relies on actual measurements of the performance of various system hardware components, and on simulations where measurements are still unavailable. The updated performance estimates meet all the relevant requirements from the LSST Science Requirements Document. As our knowledge of the as-buit system continues to improve, updates to these estimates will continue to be provided.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

SMTN-002: Calculating LSST limiting magnitudes and SNR

This technote documents the various m5 calculation tools and provides some summary information to facilitate calculating SNR and m5 values. The throughput curves used for this analysis are from v1.9 of the syseng_throughput repo, which includes the "triple silver" mirror coatings, and as-measured mirror, filter and lens throughputs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

PSTN-051: Survey Strategy and Cadence Choices for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)

A summary of survey strategy and cadence choices, simulated and evaluated by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Scheduler Team, prepared for the Survey Cadence and Optimization Committee (SCOC). A large telescope survey, covering the entire visible sky repeatedly every few days in multiple bandpasses over the course of ten years, is the core idea of the LSST. An area of about 20,000 square degrees observed under a wide range of conditions to deep coadded limiting magnitudes in bandpasses ugrizy enables cosmological studies and studies of the Milky Way structure with unprecedented precision; the same survey, when cadenced well, can serve to open new windows into our understanding of transient and variable stars, and extend our knowledge of small bodies throughout the Solar System by orders of magnitude. The outlines of, and some basic necessary requirements for these goals are outlined in the LSST Science Requirements Document (SRD). Finding options for the observing strategy to meet more detailed needs of an even wider range of science goals, as well as building the LSST Scheduler and Metrics Analysis Framework, has been the work of the LSST Scheduler Team with support and input from the astronomical community, including the Community Observing Strategy Evaluation Paper (COSEP), the Call for White Papers, numerous performance metrics, and guidance from the LSST Science Advisory Committee in their Recommendations for Operations Simulator Experiments. This report will help enable the SCOC to make its recommendation for the preferred survey strategy.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

LDM-151: Data Management Science Pipelines Design

The LSST Science Requirements Document (the LSST SRD) specifies a set of data product guidelines, designed to support science goals envisioned to be enabled by the LSST observing program. Following these guidelines, the details of these data products have been described in the LSST Data Products Definition Document (DPDD), and captured in a formal flow-down from the SRD via the LSST System Requirements (LSR), Observatory System Specifications (OSS), to the Data Management System Requirements (DMSR). The LSST Data Management subsystem's responsibilities include the design, implementation, deployment and execution of software pipelines necessary to generate these data products. This document describes the design of the scientific aspects of those pipelines.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2016

OSSOS. IV. Discovery of a Dwarf Planet Candidate in the 9:2 Resonance with Neptune

We report the discovery and orbit of a new dwarf planet candidate, 2015 RR245, by the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS). The orbit of 2015 RR245 is eccentric (e 0.586), with a semimajor axis near 82 au, yielding a perihelion distance of 34 au. 2015 RR245 has g - r 0.59 +/- 0.11 and absolute magnitude Hr 3.6 +/- 0.1; for an assumed albedo of pV 12, the object has a diameter of approximately 670 km. Based on astrometric measurements from OSSOS and Pan-STARRS1, we find that 2015 RR245 is securely trapped on ten-megayear timescales in the 9:2 mean-motion resonance with Neptune. It is the first trans-Neptunian object (TNO) identied in this resonance. On hundred-megayear timescales, particles in 2015 RR245-like orbits depart and sometimes return to the resonance, indicating that 2015 RR245 likely forms part of the long-lived metastable population of distant TNOs that drift between resonance sticking and actively scattering via gravitational encounters with Neptune. The discovery of a 9:2 TNO stresses the role of resonances in the long-term evolution of objects in the scattering disk and reinforces the view that distant resonances are heavily populated in the current solar system. This object further motivates detailed modeling of the transient sticking population.

Bannister, Michele T.↗
NASA NTRS2016

The Outer Solar System Origins Survey: Design and First-Quarter Discoveries - I.

We report the discovery, tracking, and detection circumstances for 85 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) from the first 42 square degrees of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey. This ongoing r-band solar system survey uses the 0.9 square degree field of view MegaPrime camera on the 3.6 meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Our orbital elements for these TNOs are precise to a fractional semimajor axis uncertainty of less than 0.1 percent. We achieve this precision in just two oppositions, as compared to the normal three to five oppositions, via a dense observing cadence and innovative astrometric technique. These discoveries are free of ephemeris bias, a first for large trans-Neptunian surveys. We also provide the necessary information to enable models of TNO orbital distributions to be tested against our TNO sample. We confirm the existence of a cold "kernel" of objects within the main cold classical Kuiper Belt and infer the existence of an extension of the "stirred" cold classical Kuiper Belt to at least several au beyond the 2:1 mean motion resonance with Neptune. We find that the population model of Petit et al. remains a plausible representation of the Kuiper Belt. The full survey, to be completed in 2017, will provide an exquisitely characterized sample of important resonant TNO populations, ideal for testing models of giant planet migration during the early history of the solar system.

Bannister, Michele T.↗