Science with LSST

Tucson, AZ -- November 17-18, 2000

Workshop Report: [PDF]

Appendix C: Presentation Viewgraphs (not yet available).

Announcement

One of the recommendations of the McKee-Taylor Decadal Survey for O/IR ground-based astronomy is a project called the Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope. This was envisioned by the O/IR Panel as a 6.5-m class optical telescope with a three degree field of view that would have the capability to image the entire visible sky to substantial depth in a few nights, and thus, open up the time domain. Its mode of operation would be unique in that a number of different experiments would be undertaken simultaneously by defining a series of pointings, filter bandpasses, and exposure times, and releasing the data stream immediately to the entire community.

The projects that motivated a strong recommendation for this project by both the OIR panel and the survey committee are:

1. the discovery and orbit determination of 90% of the earth-crossing asteroids above a size of 300 meters over a period of ten years;

2. a deep census to establish the orbital and gross physical properties of a sample of 10,000 Kuiper Belt Objects;

3. photometric monitoring of 10^8 stars to detect extrasolar planets by occultations and microlensing;

4. the discovery of thousands of supernovae that will trace departures from the smooth Hubble flow at small redshift and help measure cosmological parameters at large redshift;

5. the development of a huge archive of variable objects, including stars, AGNs, and lensed objects;

6. the detection of rare transient objects, both known -- such as gamma ray bursts -- and unknown;

7. a survey to establish a complete sample of halo white dwarfs, using color and proper motion information;

8. a deep digital map of the sky that will provide a resource to support observations at all wavelengths;

9. very deep images of limited regions that can be used for 3-d tomographic mass reconstruction (via weak lensing) to examine the dependence of various metrics with cosmic time.

Obviously, the development and operation of LSST will require a systems perspective from beginning to end, using the science drivers to understand the performance they require from the site, telescope (including aperture), instrument, data processing, and operations mode. In order to develop this flowdown from science to requirements, we are holding a community workshop.

The workshop, "Science with the LSST", will be held in Tucson on 17 and 18 November, 2000. The workshop aims to explore the scientific areas and procedures that are likely to constrain the design or operation of the facility together with the elements of the LSST system that need this input. Areas of concern will be identified as subjects for subsequent study. The workshop format will be:

1. Presentations on technical aspects of LSST project including:
   
   strawman telescope design
   instrument concept and detector issues
   expected hardware/software performance
   operations mode concept
   other complementary projects
   

2. Presentations on areas relevant to performance definition for LSST:
   moving objects
   transient events and variable objects
   co-added deep images over the entire sky
   very deep images over limited areas
   photometry issues
   astrometry issues
   initial data processing/archiving
   analysis and operations mode
   

3. Breakout sessions in which groups of 4-8 examine the requirements of various scientific programs. Together with LSST performance, they should consider supporting or follow-up observations that will be necessary to carry out the science.

4. A plenary session with reports from the breakout groups and discussion of how to assemble the requirements into a plan for LSST. In addition, we will try to identify those areas where further work is needed in order to refine the requirements or to develop elements of the LSST system.

The outcome of the workshop will be a summary public report to guide further development of LSST. Following this science workshop we envision a technical workshop that will explore design, development, and fabrication challenges resulting from the requirements that flow from the science. Reports from the two workshops will be incorporated into a road-map for development and design studies necessary to prepare a realistic proposal.

The "Science with LSST" Organizing Committee

• Todd Boroson
• Richard Green
• Mike Lesser
• Robert Millis
• Philip Pinto
• Tony Tyson
• Dennis Zaritsky

tboroson@noao.edu Updated: 16May2001