Talk:Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Accelerated schedule?
I see that the article was edited in November 2006, when the construction dates were updated. Still, the intro to the article has construction starting in 2010 and complete in 2013.

According to this press release at Brookhaven, announcing a $14.2M grant to the LSST, the years should be 2009 and 2012.

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=05-X16

I haven't changed the article. ChrisWinter 16:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd be inclined to leave it. These things are more commonly late than early.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.41.210.146 (talk) 03:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a 2005 press release. 2007 data claims September, 2015 (assuming they get funding).    http://www.bnl.gov/npp/docs/doehep07/oconnor_LSST%2004-17-2007.pdf  Article updated.  71.41.210.146 (talk) 07:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The official schedule is for engineering first light in 2014, scientific first light in 2015. I have never edited a wikipedia page before, -i would be very grateful if someone replaced the telescope graphic with the more recent, correct design as per this page here contact me for more image resolutions and angles. Lsst analyst (talk) 19:33, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Updates (to be merged into article)
M2 has been cast and generated. M1/M3 is currently being generated: M1 has been rough ground, and M3 is being rough ground.  It is expected to be finished in early 2012.  71.41.210.146 (talk) 06:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Engineering first light
I may be uninformed, but I have no idea what the term "engineering first light" means. I can guess, but would it be better if someone re-wrote this section so that it is in plain English which avoids jargon? --95.115.190.59 (talk) 00:20, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Note to self: LSST software is open source, worth adding to article.
I saw it described in this Symmetry article. Apparently, it's already running the Hyper Suprime-Cam on the Subaru Telescope.

Sources for the software itself (which is GPL2):
 * https://confluence.lsstcorp.org/display/LSWUG/Getting+Started+with+the+LSST+Software+Stack
 * https://dev.lsstcorp.org/trac/wiki/GitDemoAndTutorial
 * https://git.lsstcorp.org/trac

I don't have time to make elegant prose of this; if someone beats me to it, go for it! 71.41.210.146 (talk) 12:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

How effective will it be for UV
Can we say why it was designed to reach into the near UV (or is that standard for observatories at this altitude?), and how effective it might be ? - Rod57 (talk) 16:36, 24 April 2018 (UTC)


 * u filters like LSST will use are very common: SDSS had a similar one. The current best estimates of the LSST filter response curves (including losses from the atmosphere) are in this plot, but I'm not sure if the copyright/license on it would allow us to included it in Wikipedia. - Parejkoj (talk) 17:07, 27 April 2018 (UTC)


 * One of the survey bands will be u (320.5–393.5 nm), which is near-UV, so the telescope is definitely designed to reach there. u-band images will be part of the survey product, and the project wouldn't include it if it weren't scientifically useful.  I don't understand your question "How effective it might be?" well enough to give a quantitative answer; LSST talks about the limiting magnitude of 5σ detected stars, which is 23.53 for the u band, which is worse than gri (24.77 for g) and better than zy (22.42 for y).  23.83.37.241 (talk) 10:09, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * P.S. Another LSST filter plot: https://speclite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/filters.html#lsst-filters
 * Thanks - I was surprised at a ground based observatory doing a UV survey (since much UV absorbed by atm). Hubble ST does UV so I was wondering how effective ground based UV would be compared to space based (albeit with smaller mirrors in space). Is the UV observing a cheap addition to this observatory or does it require more expensive optics and sensors ? - Rod57 (talk) 20:17, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what improvement you want to make to this article? Rubin Observatory's u-band filter is pretty typical for a ground-based observatory (just much larger, physically, because the camera is large). - Parejkoj (talk) 21:49, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Separate VRO and LSST pages
As a builder of LSST, I've passed this page on to our communications office to check for accuracy. We're still getting used to the new nomenclature ourselves, so I figured someone better versed in it should take a look here. One suggestion someone had was to have separate pages for VRO (the observatory itself), and LSST (the survey that will be conducted by VRO starting 2022). That could also help tidy up this page. Do other editors have thoughts on this? - Parejkoj (talk) 20:46, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Current articles are mixed. Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Pan-STARRS have an article on the survey and telescope(s) combined. The Samuel Oschin telescope telescope has its own page, but there is one for National Geographic Society – Palomar Observatory Sky Survey and one for Zwicky Transient Facility as well.  Likewise there are separate articles on Hubble Space Telescope and Hubble Deep Field.  From this I would conclude that if the main use of a telescope is a survey, then the two are closely related and one article suffices.  If the telescope is used for lots of things (like Hubble), or is repurposed after the original survey completes, then separate articles are appropriate.  So I'd keep one article for now.   LouScheffer (talk) 02:22, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems separate articles on major discoveries, or images which became iconic, could eventually fit a multi-page approach. Probably depends how much new knowledge emerges from the project and how notable individual or overall discoveries become separate from the existence of the instrument itself. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:47, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems best to keep everything in one article for now, while the observatory is still under construction. But, after the survey is in progress for a while and begins to have a real science impact, then there could easily be material for separate articles on the telescope/observatory itself and on the survey and its scientific results. Aldebarium (talk) 05:58, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Ownership and location
Something I found very confusing when reading this is trying to understand exactly who owns this telescope, and how the US is building a telescope in Chile. How does the mix of private, research and government funding work? Who will own and operate it? How did they acquire the land in Chile? What is the relationship with the Chilean government? It would be great if some of these points could be clarified in the article, perhaps even in the lede. Stevage 18:49, 16 January 2020 (UTC)


 * You should be able to find some of that information in the LSST Science Book and/or on one of the links on the [organization page. It would be a useful addition to the page, I agree. - [[User:Parejkoj|Parejkoj]] (talk) 18:21, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Pollution from the mega constellations of satellites
I see reports that this will affect the long exposure of wide-field cameras already seen in CTIO.Quantanew (talk) 18:42, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Missing reference for filter selection
Hi Parejkoj, by reverting my edit you removed a source and restored a "citation needed" tag. Please provide a reference for your insider kowledge. --Rainald62 (talk) 08:08, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry, I didn't see the CN tag there. The original text is correct, that FAQ page is just written in a confusing way. Although I now see the filter names are capitalized, which is also wrong. I'll add some cites. - Parejkoj (talk) 17:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Inconsistency in the "Naming" section
The Naming section of the article has an apparent inconsistency.

Current prose is: In June 2019, the renaming of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory was initiated by Eddie Bernice Johnson and Jenniffer González-Colón.[22] The renaming was enacted into law on December 20, 2019.[23] The official renaming was announced at the 2020 American Astronomical Society winter meeting.[12] The observatory is named after Vera C. Rubin. The name honors Rubin and her colleagues' legacy to probe the nature of dark matter by mapping and cataloging billions of galaxies through space and time.[22]

The telescope will be named the Simonyi Survey Telescope, to acknowledge the private donors Charles and Lisa Simonyi.[24]

It seems to be named both the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and also Simonyi Survey Telescope. Is it both at the same time? Is it named/called different things by different political jurisdictions or different astronomical groups? Was it perhaps named one thing at one time in history and is now named something else?

We should endeavor to improve the article and clarify this. N2e (talk) 11:05, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The telescope structure is "the Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin Observatory", as opposed to the observatory as a whole (buildings, camera, auxtel, equipment, computers), which is "the Vera C. Rubin Observatory". In most relevant circumstances, the Rubin Observatory is what one would refer to. The naming guide makes this all clear, I hope: https://project.lsst.org/documents/name-use-guide - Parejkoj (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)