Vera C. Rubin Observatory:

Ushering a New Era of TDA

Federica Bianco

(she / her)

University of Delaware

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Biden School of Public Policy and Administration

Data  Science Institute

Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time

Construction Project Deputy Project Scientist

slides available at

https://slides.com/federicabianco/kahn22

This is a living land acknowledgement developed in consultation with tribal leadership of Poutaxet, what is now known as the “Delaware Bay,” including: the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, the Nanticoke Indian Tribe, and the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation in 2021. We thank these leaders for their generosity.

The University of Delaware occupies lands vital to the web of life for Lenni Lenape and Nanticoke, who share their ancestry, history, and future in this region. UD has financially benefited from this regional occupation as well as from Indigenous territories that were expropriated through the United States land grant system. European colonizers and later the United States forced Nanticoke and Lenni Lenape westward and northward, where they formed nations in present-day Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada. Others never left their homelands or returned from exile when they could. We express our appreciation for ongoing Indigenous stewardship of the ecologies and traditions of this region. While the harms to Indigenous people and their homelands are beyond repair, we commit to building right relationships going forward by collaborating with tribal leadership on actionable institutional steps.

LSST Science Drivers

Probing Dark Energy and Dark Matter

LSST Science Drivers

Taking an inventory of the solar system

from threatening NEO to the distant Oort Cloud

image credit ESO-Gaia

LSST Science Drivers

Mapping the Milky Way (and Local Volume)

LSST Science Drivers

Exploring the Transients and Variable Universe

10M alerts every night shared with the world

60 seconds after observation

The Rubin Organization is almost as complex as the Universe it will explore!

Rubin LSST Science Collaborations

8 teams

>1500 members

>2000 affiliations

5 continents

Rubin LSST Science Collaborations

Active Galactic Nuclei SC

Dark Energy SC

Informatics and Statistics SC

Galaxies SC

Strong Lensing SC

Stars Milky Way Local Volume  SC

Solar System  SC

Transients and Variable Stars  SC

Rubin LSST Science Collaborations

https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.04499 (to be published in PASP)

Rubin LSST Science Collaborations

world public!

world public!

world public!

Vera C. Rubin Observatory

May 2022 - Telescope Mount Assembly

The DOE LSST Camera - 3.2 Gigapixel

Camera and Cryostat integration completed at SLAC in May 2022,

Shutter and filter auto-changer integrated into camera body

Pre-Ship Review ongoing at SLAC

ls.st/dates

First Photon forecasted for July 2024 (+ contingency)

LSST time domain data products

Data Products

world public!

ls.st/dates

First Photon forecasted for July 2024

LSST Data Volume:

from novelty to statistical samples

from unknown to discovered

From novelty to statistical samples

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars 30B galaxies Ivezic+19

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

~50 kilonovae Setzer+19, Andreoni+19   (+ ToO)

~1000 SNe every night in the LSST sky

(10K/year) LSST SCs 2009

Rubin Transients by the numbers

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars 30B galaxies Ivezic+19

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

~50 kilonovae Setzer+19, Andreoni+19   (+ ToO)

>10 interstellar objects

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

~1000 SNe every night in the LSST sky

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars 30B galaxies Ivezic+19

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

~50 kilonovae Setzer+19, Andreoni+19   (+ ToO)

~1000 SNe every night in the LSST sky

(10K/year) LSST SCs 2009

Rubin Transients by the numbers

From novelty to statistical samples

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars 30B galaxies Ivezic+19

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

~50 kilonovae Setzer+19, Andreoni+19   (+ ToO)

>10 interstellar objects

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

~1000 SNe every night in the LSST sky

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars 30B galaxies Ivezic+19

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

~50 kilonovae Setzer+19, Andreoni+19   (+ ToO)

>10 interstellar objects

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

Rubin Transients by the numbers

New stress on the infrastructure

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars 30B galaxies Ivezic+19

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

~50 kilonovae Setzer+19, Andreoni+19   (+ ToO)

>10 interstellar objects

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

~1000 SNe every night in the LSST sky

Rubin will see ~1000 SN every night!

Credit: Alex Gagliano University of Illinois, IAIFI fellow 2023

Discovery Engine

10M alerts/night

Community Brokers

target observation managers

the astronomy discovery chain

Pitt-Google

Broker

BABAMUL

Photometric Classification

Dark Energy Science Collaboration

(DESC) 

+ 

Transients and Variable

Science Collaboration

(TVS SC)

Deep Drilling Fields Data

Kaggle PLAsTiCC challenge

AVOCADO classifier

https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04690

Wide Fast Deep

Lochner et al 2018

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.00515.pdf

Time

Domain

Science

Static

Science

Alerts based

Catalog based

Deep stack

based

Deep stack

based

Time

Domain

Science

Static

Science

Alerts based

Catalog based

Deep stack

based

Time

Domain

Science

Static

Science

AGN

STRONG

LENSING

50M+ AGNs to z~7.5

variability, microlensing, binaries

cosmography from Lens Time Delays

calibration of cluster mass function with with S+W Lensing

resolved high z galaxy properties

most of human history

a never changing sky

circa 1900

Ivezić et al 2019

Marshall et al 2017

Rubin LSST survey design

Rubin LSST survey design

(current plan)

26.9

28.1

coadd 5σ depth

source http://astro-lsst-01.astro.washington.edu:8080/?runId=2

26.8

29.05

28.6

26.8

Rubin LSST survey design

(current plan)

Rubin LSST survey design

(current plan: 3% of the LSST time devoted to ToO)

Rubin can find the electromagnetic counterpart of Gravitational Wave and Neutrino discoveries better than any survey!

LIGO/VIRGO area of localization ~100deg square

 Ursa Minor contains 255.86 square degrees

Rubin FoV 10 deg

S190425z 18% of the sky localization

2024 workshop organized by Andreoni + Margutti

Rubin LSST survey design

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4365/ac3e72

https://www.lsst.org/content/charge-survey-cadence-optimization-committee-scoc

Rubin has involved the community to an unprecedented level in survey design this is a uniquely "democratic" process!

2015-17

2018

2021

Call for white papers -> 46 community submissions

467 unique authors  | +16 simulations

Call for "cadence notes" -> 46 community submissions

218 unique authors | 173 simulations

Community Observing Strategy Evaluation Paper  (COSEP, Marshall et al. 2017)

9 chapters ​25 science cases 14 LSST simulations

The community received indispensable support from

- LSSTCorporation Enabling Science Program

(supporting small projects and fellowships)

- Heising-Simons Fundation

($1M to the SCs + smaller grants to support workshops over time)

Survey Cadence Optimization Committee

Rubin LSST survey design

2015-17

https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0067-0049/page/rubin_cadence

20 peer review papers accepted

several more under review and in preparation

Supernovae 

Kilonovae

Blazars

AGN

Variable stars

YoungStellarObjects

PulsatingStars

TidalDisruptionEvents

TD anomalies+unknowns

...

Key development needs (my opinion)

TDA is resource intense

Equitable Access Needs Resources

support training a diverse workforce

recognize technical contributions

enable access to tool (open science)

support preparatory work

Rubin DEI activities

https://www.lsst.org/about/dei

Thomas, S. J., et al. (2022), Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems IX, 12186, 1218607.

Science Collaborations activities (e.g.)

Micro- and meso-lensing for stellar physics

• detect microlensing events where both the lens and source lie in the Magellanic Clouds, and explore stellar and stellar remnant populations in another galaxy.
• LSST will investigate the mass distribution offaint objects in the local neighborhood, such as low mass dwarfs, stellar remnants, andfree-floating planets.

Survey coordination

(one example)

Rubin             +                Roman

Street + 2018, arxiv/1812.04445

TVS Roadmap

Humbleton et al 2022