Rachel Street (Las Cumbres Observatory)
will hold the seminar on the topic: Rubin survey strategy & optimization for Galactic Science.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, LSST, promises to revolutionize many areas of astrophysics.
Due to start science operations in October 2024, and continue for a full decade, LSST will produce a long-baseline catalogue of timeseries imaging in 6 optical passbands down to r~24.7mag.
The full scientific results from this unique dataset will depend strongly on the details of the observing strategy adopted. This is particularly true for objects in the Milky Way, since their spatial distribution is relatively tightly constrained to a region that was not densely sampled in the original survey design.
In order to reconcile the needs of a very broad range of astrophysics, Rubin has adopted a novel, community-based approach to designing its survey strategy.
Rachel Street gives an overview of this process to date, with particular attention to proposals advocating for galactic science and stellar and compact object microlensing. She describes the simulations of the LSST survey, and the statistical metrics used to evaluate how well the survey will meet different science goals. Lastly, she reviews the recently-published Phase 2 recommendations for LSST survey strategy and the remaining scope for further optimizations.
You can find the recording here.