Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

• Opening a Window of Discovery on the Dynamic Universe

Basic Information:

• LSST Organization Website
  • Information for scientists
• LSST Community Forum
• The LSST Corporation (LSSTC)
  • LSSTC is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 corporation formed to initiate the LSST Project and advance the science of astronomy and physics.
• LSST Fact Sheets
• LSST Data Management on Zenodo
• LSST Camera Website at SLAC
• LSST Science Advisory Committee
• NOAO & Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

LSST Science Collaborations

• Galaxies Collaboration
• Stars, Milky Way, and Local Volume
• Solar System Collaboration
• Dark Energy Collaboration
• Active Galactic Nuclei Collaboration
• Transients and Variable Stars Collaboration
• Strong Lensing Collaboration
• Informatics and Statistics Collaboration

LSST Dark Matter

• LSST Dark Matter - Probing the fundamental physics of dark matter with LSST
  • Dark Matter Graphics - This graphic is intended to help conceptually organize the LSST dark matter program and to serve as a road map for future scientific investigations.

LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration

• LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration
  • LSST DESC is the large international collaboration that will make high accuracy measurements of fundamental cosmological parameters using data from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
  • LSST DESC Science Roadmap
  • LSST Dark Energy School

Social Media

• LSST Youtube Channel
• LSST Twitter Handle
• LSST LinkedIn

Important Documents:

• LSST Science Book Version 2.0
  • 596 pages, over 50 Mb. The arXiv version is here
• Science-Driven Optimization of the LSST Observing Strategy
  • The GitHub repo is here
• Summary of Data Management Principles
• Data Products Definition Document

Important Publications:

• LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
• Probing the Fundamental Nature of Dark Matter with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Planning and Scheduling Observations:

• A Framework for Telescope Schedulers: With Applications to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
• Optimizing the LSST Observing Strategy for Dark Energy Science: DESC Recommendations for the Wide-Fast-Deep Survey
• LSST Target-of-opportunity Observations of Gravitational-wave Events: Essential and Efficient
• The Prospects of Observing Tidal Disruption Events with the LSST

Technical Papers:

• An Overview of the LSST Image Processing Pipelines
• Models and Simulations for the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC)
• DESCQA: An Automated Validation Framework for Synthetic Sky Catalogs

Synergy with Other Projects

• Enhancing LSST Science with Euclid Synergy
• The Gaia-LSST Synergy: resolved stellar populations in selected Local Group stellar systems

Need for Spectroscopy

• Deep Multi-object Spectroscopy to Enhance Dark Energy Science from LSST
• Single-object Imaging and Spectroscopy to Enhance Dark Energy Science from LSST
• Wide-field Multi-object Spectroscopy to Enhance Dark Energy Science from LSST

Science and System Requirements:

• Science Requirements Document
• LSST System Requirements (LSR)
• Observatory System Specifications (OSS)
• Data Management System (DMS) Requirements
• Telescope and Site (TS) Requirements
• Camera Subsystem Requirements
• Observatory Control System Requirements

Policy and Community

• LSST Community Guidelines
• LSST Communications Code of Conduct
• LSST Meetings Code of Conduct
• Bullying and Harassment Complaints Procedural Manual
• Template for Science Collaboration Publication Policy
• How to Cite LSST Papers

Software and Pipeline:

• The LSST Science Pipelines
  • GitHub Repositories
  • LSST Documentation Hub
  • Doxygen Documents
  • Documentation contribution guidelines
• LSST Data Management Team Github Organization
• LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration Github Organization
• LSST Dark Matter Github Organization

Important Components:

• afw: LSST data management: pipeline library code and primitives including images and tables
• lsst-build: a builder and continuous integration tool for LSST
• pipe_base: LSST Data Management: base classes for data processing tasks
• pipe_tasks: LSST Data Management: astronomical data processing tasks
• pipe_drivers: LSST Data Management: high level task coordination scripts
• daf_butler: Prototype for data access framework described in DMTN-056
• daf_persistence: Data access interface (the Butler) and deprecated persistence framework for LSST Data Management
• daf_base: Low-level data structures, including memory-management helpers (Citizen), mappings (PropertySet, PropertyList), and DateTime
• skymap: Sky pixelization interfaces and implementations used by LSST Data Management
• jointcal: Simultaneous astrometry and photometry
• meas_mosaic: determine consistent astrometry and photometry for multiple images
• meas_modelfit: LSST Data Management: model fitting algorithms
• meas_extentions_shapeHSM: LSST Data Management: HSM shape measurement
• meas_extensions_psfex: LSST Data Management: PSF Estimation
• meas_base: LSST Data Management: core astronomical measurement algorithms
• meas_algorithms: LSST Data Management: astronomical measurement algorithm
• meas_deblender: LSST Data Management: astronomical source deblender
• meas_astrom: LSST Data Management: astrometric measurement algorithms
• ip_isr: LSST data management: instrument signature removal (detrending) for astronomical images
• ip_diffim: LSST data management: astronomical image differencing
• geom: Low-level geometry primitives for LSST Data Management
• coadd_utils: LSST data management: base classes for coadding (stacking) astronomical images
• throughputs: LSST Simulations repository for baseline evaluation information

Simulation Related:

• imSim: GalSim based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) image simulation package
  • It produces simulated images from the 3.25 Gigapixel camera which are suitable to be processed through the LSST Data Management pipeline.
• phoSim: Photon Simulator
  • A set of extremely fast photon Monte Carlo codes used to calculate the physics of the atmosphere and a telescope & camera in order to simulate realistic optical/IR astronomical images.
• sims_utils: LSST Simulations package for simulation utility functions
• sims_photUtils: LSST Simulations package for photometric utility functions
• sims_survey_fields: A package for retrieving LSST survey fields
• sims_skybrightness: Tool to predict the background sky emission SED at an arbitrary RA, Dec, and MJD

Useful Resources

• Calculating LSST limiting magnitudes and SNR
• Simulation Survey Field Information
  • This package contains the sky field information that is used by the Operations Simulator.