Vera C. Rubin Observatory:

Ushering a New Era of TDA

Federica Bianco

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

Deputy Project Scientist, Rubin Construction

Interim Head of Science, Rubin Operation

slides available at

https://slides.com/federicabianco/strausslupton23

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.

Rubin Observatory

Site: Cerro Pachon, Chile

Funding: US NSF + DOE

Status: final phases of construction - completion expected 2023

@fedhere

September 2016

@fedhere

Fabruary 2020

@fedhere

May 2022

@fedhere

November 2022

@fedhere

May 2022

May 2022 - Telescope Mount Assembly

The DOE LSST Camera - 3.2 Gigapixel

3.2 Gigapixel camera

378 4K ultra-high-definition TV

The DOE LSST Camera - 3.2 Gigapixel

Camera and Cryostat integration completed at SLAC in May,

Shutter and filter auto-changer integrated into camera body

3024 science raft amplifier channels, only 3 are substandard.

Rubin ugrizy filters

Summer 2021

𝑢 (left) and 𝑦 band (right) magnitude corrections associated with read-noise, QE, and vignetting effects for each amplifier in the CCD plane.

ΔCm∞

0.4

- 0.4

*pstn-054.lsst.io

AuxTel:

running since 2022

AuxTel is being used for monthly on-sky commissioning runs 3 nights/lunar cycle:

Performing scheduler driven observations
Standard star spectroscopy for characterization of atmospheric transmission
Measure image performance as will be done in Ops

LOVE: LSST Operations Visualization Environment

LSST Data Volume: a change of perspective

Rubin will see ~1000 SN every night!

A lot of them will be too faint to study with traditional means, particularly spectra.

Lots of emphasis in new analysis techniques that rely on "Big Data"

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_supernova_observation

federica bianco fbianco@udel.edu

@fedhere

~1000 images per night

10M alerts per night (5sigma changes)

17B stars Ivezic+18

~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

SKA

(2025)

(original graphics: Leanne Guy)

federica bianco - fbianco@udel.edu

@fedhere

At this level of precision,everything is variable, everything is blended, everything is moving.

	u,g,r,i,z,y
Photometric precision Photometric accuracy Astrometric precision Astrometric accuracy # visits* mag single image* mag single coadd*	5 mmag 10 mmag 10 mas 50 mas 44, 63, 178, 182, 154, 160 23.8, 24.5, 24.0, 23.4 22.7, 23 26.9, 26.9, 26.4, 25.6, 24.8

SDSS

LSST-like HSC composite

http://faculty.washington.edu/ivezic/talks/NASAseminar.pdf

ls.st/srd

*pstn-054.lsst.io

SDSS 2x4 arcmin sq griz

MYSUC (Gawiser 2014) 1 mag shallower than LSST coadds

federica bianco - fbianco@udel.edu

At this level of precision,everything is variable, everything is blended, everything is moving.

ls.st/srd

http://faculty.washington.edu/ivezic/talks/NASAseminar.pdf

@fedhere

*pstn-054.lsst.io

	u,g,r,i,z,y
Photometric precision Photometric accuracy Astrometric precision Astrometric accuracy # visits* mag single image* mag single coadd*	5 mmag 10 mmag 10 mas 50 mas 44, 63, 178, 182, 154, 160 23.8, 24.5, 24.0, 23.4 22.7, 23 26.9, 26.9, 26.4, 25.6, 24.8

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

image credit: ESA-Justyn R. Maund

Exploring the Transients and Variable Universe

10M alerts every night shared with the world

60 seconds after observation

17B stars Ivezic+18

~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 number

17B stars Ivezic+18

~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 number

SKA

(2025)

17B stars Ivezic+18

~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 number

SKA

(2025)

17B stars Ivezic+18

~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 number

SKA

(2025)

17B stars Ivezic+19

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

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

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

Rubin Transients by the number

SKA

(2025)

17B stars Ivezic+19

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

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

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

Rubin Transients by the number

SKA

(2025)

17B stars Ivezic+19

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

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

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

> 10 Interstellar Objects (aliens?)

Rubin Transients by the number

SKA

(2025)

LSST time domain data products

What time scales can LSST probe?

Ivezić+2019

What time scales can LSST probe?

Ivezić+2019

Data Products

federica bianco - fbianco@udel.edu

@fedhere

world public!

federica bianco - fbianco@udel.edu

@fedhere

world public!

Rubin Observatory LSST

federica bianco - fbianco@udel.edu

@fedhere

17B stars Ivezic+19

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

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

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

> 10 Interstellar Objects (aliens?)

SN?

Rubin Transients by the number

SKA

(2025)

Rubin Transients by the number

17B stars Ivezic+19

~10 million QSO Mary Loli+21

∼200 quadruply-lensed quasars Minghao+19

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

~10k SuperLuminous Supernovae Villar+ 2018

~ 50k Tidal Disruption Events Brickman+ 2020

> 10 Interstellar Objects (aliens?)

~1000 SN / night

LSST

federica bianco - fbianco@udel.edu

@fedhere

Rubin will see ~1000 SN every night!

Credit: Alex Gagliano University of Illinois, IAIFI fellow 2023

LSST has profoundly changed the TDA infrastructure

Discovery Engine

10M alerts/night

Community Brokers

target observation managers

the astronomy discovery chain

Pitt-Google

Broker

BABAMUL

Photometric Classification of transients

highest participation of any astronomical Kaggle challenges

Deep Drilling Fields

Kaggle PLAsTiCC challenge

AVOCADO classifier

https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04690

Deep Drilling Fields

Kaggle PLAsTiCC challenge

AVOCADO classifier

https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04690

Wide Fast Deep

Willow Fox Fortino

UDel grad student

When they go high, we go low

Classification power vs spectral resolution for SNe subtypes

Neural Network

classifier architectures:

- transformers
- CNNs

Pies in the LSST sky

We study rare and unusual transients with machine learning and probabilistic inference

Li et al. 2022

AILE: the first AI-based platform for the detection and study of Light Echoes

NSF Award #2108841

Pessimal AI problem:

small training data
inaccurate labels
imbalance classes
diverse morphology
low SNR

Xiaolong Li

LSSTC Catalyst Fellow 2023

UDelaware->John Hopkins

AILE: the first AI-based platform for the detection and study of Light Echoes

YOLO3 + "attention" mechanism

precision 80% at 70% recall with a training set of 19 light echo examples!

Xiaolong Li

LSSTC Catalyst Fellow 2023

UDelaware->John Hopkins

cepheid

The minutes-second-subsecond Universe

The rotation, pulsation, and local accretion dynamics of these compact stellar remnants tends to occur on timescales ranging from seconds to milliseconds. Their extreme densities also makes them an excellent testing ground for nuclear, quantum, and gravitational physics.

Thomas and Kahn, 2018

stellar flares
solar system occultations
cataclysmic variable stars,
X-ray binary stars,
flare stars,
blazars
Fast Radio Bursts
technosignatures

LSST Cadence

Atmosphere-aided studies

Davenport et al. 2014

~2h

Star flares are rapid events (<30 min)

What can we learn from 1 data point?

Riley Clarke

UDel grad student

Star flares are rapid events (<30 min)

What can we learn from 1 data point?

Atmosphere-aided studies

Riley Clarke

Atmosphere-aided studies

dM energy

dDCR color temperature

Riley Clarke, Davenport, Gizis, Bianco, in prep

Riley Clarke

Atmosphere-aided studies

probability of measuring dDCR

Riley Clarke, Davenport, Gizis, Bianco, in prep

2018 Cadence White Paper

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aae7cf

Time ->

Language models for time-resolved image processing

Shar Daniels

UDel 1st year

ZTF time-resolved continuous readout images (w Igor Andreoni and Ashish Mahabal)

Transformer architecture

NN for language processing

Will we discover new physics?

A comparative assessment of LSST potential surveys in the discovery of unknown unknowns

Galarza, Bianco et al. 2021

Xiaolong Li

Li et al. 2021

LSST survey strategy optimization

Rubin LSST survey design

distributions of time gaps

in 76 LSST simulations (2018)

Rubin LSST survey design

Li et al. 2021

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4365/ac3bca

Rubin Focus Issue of ApJS on Rubin Survey Strategy Optimization

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

A focus issue of ApJS to publish LSST cadence proposals work

Rubin LSST survey design

Bianco et al. 2021

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

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

Because the Rubin LSST data is open to all US scientists and to a broader yet community worldwide, to truly make it a survey of and for and of the people, Rubin Observatory called the community to design its survey -

this is a uniquely "democratic" process!