SITCOMTN-050: Summary of In-Kind Contributions to Rubin Observatory System Integration, Test, and Commissioning Efforts

  • Keith Bechtol

Latest Revision: 2022-11-23

1 Abstract

This technote summarizes the groups and individuals making in-kind contributions to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory System Integration, Test, and Commissioning (SIT-Com) effort.

2 Introduction

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory recognizes the individuals listed below as making non-financial contributions to the System Integration, Test, and Commissioning (SIT-Com) effort to facilitate an efficient transition to LSST Operations and increase the overall scientific output of the survey. By sharing their technical and scientific expertise, these individuals enhance and diversify the Project’s planned commissioning effort. The named participants will work directly alongside Rubin Observatory staff in completing their assignments and, in exchange, will have access to commissioning data products as they are acquired. The Project will not rely on the contributions from non-Rubin-staff team members to fulfill core construction requirements and operational readiness criteria.

The participating individuals were invited to join the Rubin Observatory SIT-Com effort through one of two programs:

  1. US/Chile Commissioning Announcement of Opportunity Program, and

  2. International In-Kind Contribution Program where the recipient group is the “Rubin Commissioning Team”.

Both types of contributions are being managed by Rubin Observatory as a combined resource. As indicated below, the in-kind contributions are organized into discrete groups of like interests and skills. Each contributing group has identified a point of contact to the Rubin Observatory Project; this group leader is responsible for management of the group and for the timely completion of assigned tasks. We anticipate that participants will engage in multiple aspects of commissioning according to their abilities, participation level, the Project schedule, and the designated priorities of Rubin Observatory.

The deep level of engagement described in these programs comes with specific rights and responsibilities, as outlined in Section 4.1 of the Announcement of Opportunity. Working as part of the SIT-Com team offers direct experience with the full chain from observations to final data products and data access tools that will be released to the science community, including the hardware, image properties, and Science Pipeline algorithms. Through their efforts, these individuals will enhance the readiness of Rubin Observatory and ultimately improve the science products that will be delivered to the global Rubin community.

No papers presenting novel scientific results based on commissioning data may be posted/submitted by anyone before the associated Data Preview release date (see Rubin Data Policy). The focus of the commissioning effort is on demonstrating operational readiness rather than realizing scientific discoveries with the commissioning data itself.

All members of the SIT-Com team are expected to follow the professional standards of conduct adopted by the Project.

The final section of this document lists several additional institutional contributions to Rubin Observatory construction based on agreements that were established prior to the formalization of the two programs mentioned above. These university-based groups are making contributions that are partially supported by external sources and are listed in this document together with other in-kind contributions for completeness.

3 Contributing Groups

Note

Any proposed updates to this list of contributions (e.g., for early career scientists moving between positions) should occur via a pull request with suggested revisions to the summary.yaml file in this repository.

3.1 International In-Kind Contribution Program

ESP-BCM-S2: Technical support in commissioning

Point of Contact: Ignacio Sevilla-Noarbe

Members: Ignacio Sevilla, Cristobal Padilla, Otger Ballester, Jordi Arellano, Ricard Casas, Cristóbal Pío

FRA-INP-S6: Calibration hardware (CBP, flat screen, dome illumination, etc.)

Point of Contact: Jérémy Neveu

Members: Jérémy Neveu, Laurent Le Guillou, Eduardo Sepulveda, Sylvain Baumont

FRA-INP-S7: AuxTel support

Point of Contact: Marc Moniez

Members: Marc Moniez, Sylvie Dagoret-Campagne, Martin Monroy, Jérémy Neveu, Laurent Le Guillou, Joseph Chevalier

FRA-INP-S8: Commissioning at pixel level, data quality, and “on-sky” calibration

Point of Contact: Pierre Antilogus

Members: Dominique Boutigny, Sabine Elles, Thibault Guillemin, Fabio Hernandez, Fabrice Feinstein, Dominique Fouchez, Benjamin Racine, André Tilquin, Emmanuel Gangler, Fabrice Jammes, Nicoleta Pauna, Pierre Antilogus, Pierre Astier, Claire Juramy, Aurélien Barrau, Johan Brégeon, Céline Combet, Marine Kuna, Johann Cohen-Tanugi, Marina Ricci

FRA-INP-S9: Science validation for object detection, weak lensing, and deblending

Point of Contact: Cyrille Doux

Members: Eric Aubourg, Cécile Roucelle, Alexandre Boucaud, Justine Zeghal, Biswajit Biswas, Axel Guinot, Marina Ricci

FRA-INP-S10: Camera hardware optimization

Point of Contact: Alexandre Boucaud

Members: Eric Aubourg, Alexandre Boucaud

ITA-INA-S21: Engineering support at telescope commissioning

Point of Contact: Felice Cusano

Members: Felice Cusano, Rodolfo Canestrari, Gabriele Rodeghiero, Enrico Giro

ITA-INA-S22: Image quality analysis

Point of Contact: Giuliana Fiorentino

Members: Rodolfo Canestrari, Gabriele Rodeghiero, Enrico Giro, Marcella Di Criscienzo, Giuliana Fiorentino, Davide Massari, Luciano Lanteri, Salvatore Savarese, Pietro Schipani, Vincenzo Ripepi, Filippo D’Ammando, Vincenzo Testa, Laura Schreiber

ITA-INA-S23: Instrument, telemetry, and science trend analysis and statistical characterization

Point of Contact: Giuseppe Riccio

Members: Giuseppe Riccio, Stefano Cavuoti, Massimo Brescia

JAP-JPG-S2: TBD

Point of Contact: Dr. Yutaka Komiyama

Members: TBD

KOR-KAS-S1: KASI Fellows for commissioning observing support

Point of Contact: Narae Hwang

Members: Narae Hwang, Moo-Young Chun

UKD-UKD-S13: Support for active optics system commissioning and science validation for astrometry and photometry, galaxy clustering, low surface brightness science, multiwavelength data fusion, and strong gravitational lensing

Point of Contact: Graham Smith

Members: Aaron Watkins, Jon Loveday, Graham Smith, Tom Wilson, Dan Ryczanowski, Gavin Dalton, Will Sutherland, Tim Naylor, Raphael Shirley, Nicholas Walton, Boris Leistedt

UKD-UKD-S7: Science validation for sensor characterization and PSF modelling

Point of Contact: Ian Shipsey

Members: Ian Shipsey, Jeff Tseng, Farrukh Azfar, Daniel Weatherill

3.2 US/Chile Community Engagement with Rubin Observatory Commissioning Effort Program

US/Chile-01: Observing support

Point of Contact: Louise Edwards

Members: Louise Edwards

US/Chile-02: Observing support and camera commissioning support in Chile

Point of Contact: Marcelle Soares-Santos

Members: Johnny Esteves, Marcelle Soares-Santos

US/Chile-03: Science validation of Solar System processing pipeline

Point of Contact: Siegfried Eggl

Members: Siegfried Eggl, Shirley Shah

US/Chile-04: Science validation of PSF characterization

Point of Contact: Mike Jarvis

Members: Mike Jarvis, Rachel Mandelbaum, Tianqing Zhang, Claire-Alice Hébert, Sid Mau, Pat Burchat, Josh Meyers, Aaron Roodman, Theo Schutt, Chris Stubbs, Elana Urbach, Eske Pedersen, Brodi Elwood, Dan Weatherill, Arun Kannawadi, Erfan Nourbakhsh

US/Chile-05: Science validation for weak lensing shear estimation and development of advanced image coaddition methods

Point of Contact: Matthew R. Becker

Members: Matthew R. Becker, Arun Kannawadi, Erin Sheldon, Michael Troxel, David Kirkby, Theo Schutt, Erfan Nourbakhsh

US/Chile-06: Science validation of galaxy photometry

Point of Contact: Brant Robertson

Members: Brant Robertson, Ryan Hausen, Hubert Bretonnière

US/Chile-07: Science validation for Solar System object linkage

Point of Contact: Matthew J Holman

Members: Matthew J. Holman, Zachary Murray

US/Chile-08: Science validation for astrometry

Point of Contact: Dave Monet

Members: Dave Monet, Mike Rich, John Gizis, Markus Rabus

US/Chile-09: Science validation for strong gravitational lensing and active optics system commissioning

Point of Contact: Simon Birrer

Members: Simon Birrer, Paul Schechter, Tansu Daylan

US/Chile-10: Observing support and science validation of time series photometry

Point of Contact: Markus Rabus

Members: Markus Rabus

US/Chile-11: Science validation for difference Image Analysis (DIA) including parameter / algorithm tuning, masking, and template generation

Point of Contact: Michael Wood-Vasey

Members: Michael Wood-Vasey, Shu Liu, Bruno Sánchez, Gautham Narayan, Amanda Wasserman, Rick Kessler, Bob Armstrong, Saurabh Jha, Federica Bianco, Tatiana Acero Cuellar, Benjamin Racine, Dominique Fouchez

US/Chile-12: Science validation for sky background modeling and low surface brightness science

Point of Contact: Ian Dell’Antonio

Members: Ian Dell’Antonio, Jessica Nelson, Zacharias Escalante, Alex Drlica-Wagner, Yao-Yuan Mao, Alexie Leauthaud, Yuanyuan Zhang, Annika Peter, Anja von der Linden, Matt Kwiecien, Tesla Jeltema

US/Chile-13: Science validation for galaxy clustering analyses

Point of Contact: Eric Gawiser

Members: Andrina Nicola, Humna Awan, Eli Rykoff, Josh Meyers, Javi Sánchez, Rachel Mandelbaum, Anze Slosar, Irene Moskowitz, Heather Prince, Eric Gawiser

US/Chile-14: Science validation of photometric calibration for early science

Point of Contact: Elana Urbach

Members: Elana Urbach, Christopher Stubbs, Eske Pedersen, Saurabh Jha, Conor Larison, Douglas Tucker, Matt Wiesner, Daniel Perrefort, Michael Wood-Vasey, Gautham Narayan, Konstantin Malanchev, Melissa Butner, J. Allyn Smith

US/Chile-15: Support for commissioning data visualization and drill-down analysis

Point of Contact: David Kirkby

Members: David Kirkby, Matt Dowicz

US/Chile-16: Science validation of galaxy photometry and testing deblending algorithms in cluster fields

Point of Contact: Anja von der Linden

Members: Anja von der Linden, Ian Dell’Antonio, Zacharias Escalante, Shuang Liang, Radhakrishnan Srinivasan, Shenming Fu, Camille Avestruz, Ismael Mendoza, Simona Mei, Peter Melchior, Doug Clowe, Rémy Joseph, Cristobal Sifon

US/Chile-17: Investigation and mitigation of sensor anomalies for ComCam and LSSTCam detectors using calibration and on-sky data

Point of Contact: Simona Murgia

Members: Simona Murgia, Alex Broughton, Johanna Paine

3.3 Institutional Contributions to Rubin Observatory Construction

Duke University: SIT-Com support

Point of Contact: Chris Walter

Members: Chris Walter

Harvard University: SIT-Com support

Point of Contact: Chris Stubbs

Members: Chris Stubbs, Elana Urbach, Eske Pedersen, Dillon Brout, Ali Kurmus, Aris Zhu

University of Washington: SIT-Com support

Point of Contact: Andy Connolly

Members: Andrew Connolly, John Franklin Crenshaw, Dino Bektesevic, Colin Chandler, Sam Wyatt, Pedro Bernardinelli, Yuankun (David) Wang, Steven Stetzler, Jake Kurlander, Chester Li, Max West, Drew Oldag, Carl Christoffersen, Doug Branton

University of Wisconsin-Madison: SIT-Com support

Point of Contact: Keith Bechtol

Members: Keith Bechtol, Peter Ferguson, Michael Martinez, Miranda Gorsuch