Is there a document that defines the conditions for Rubin operations as to average hours available each night for observation, historical weather patterns, etc?
Hi @sdcorle1 , https://pstn-051.lsst.io/ Section 2.1 gives the model of observing conditions based on historical data. Figure 1 shows the cloudiness (~70% time cloud level below 3/10 and the observatory would open). Figure 2 shows the average time (~6hr available). Perhaps @ljones can provide more details.
Shenming Yes, PSTN-051 is a good resource for this information. There have been some updates in the range of weather conditions we consider – we extended our cloud and seeing records to cover a much wider range of years, and now consider simulations with a variety of start time to sample a wider range of historical weather. The average time per night is approximately the same, although we have also updated the downtime estimates for the first year of observing to account for a ramp-up in observing efficiency.
Another way to look at the expected conditions is to look at the simulated pointing histories, such as those released with the Phase 3 survey strategy recommendations, announced here - SCOC Phase 3 recommendation. These pointing histories include the expected conditions for a theoretical Rubin survey, with details for every simulated observation.
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Thanks, this is very helpful. I believe that what I would like to have is buried in Figure 14 of the SCOC recommendation. My search is for the average onsky time over the 10 year mission with the impacts that are plotted vertically removed. Would I find something like that somewhere in the opsim documentation? That is, the details that went into making Figure 14?