Hello - Please forgive my ignorance - I have been involved in planning science projects with Rubin data but I have basically no experience working directly with the data myself. I’m a faculty member at Indiana University and a member of the Rubin Stars, Milky Way, & Local Volume (SMWLV) collaboration, as well as the Star Clusters Working Group within the SMWLV collaboration. A staff member in our department who works with our campus observatory has asked me for help getting him access to some of the Rubin data. I have no idea whether I can provide such access or what the steps are for him getting it (to be honest, I had assumed that anyone at a U.S. institution would have access by just requesting it, since the U.S. is a partner), but he asked me to help him find out what he needs to do. He specifically is interested in working on the data for the “Indiana asteroids”, which I believe are asteroids that Frank Edmondson and others at Indiana U. were involved in identifying and tracking, at some point in the past history of our department.
My colleague forwarded me an email he says he got from the Gemini Observatory that has instructions about how he can get access to the Rubin data. The email instructions include this statement: “Ask your department’s Rubin PI if you have been added to the lsst-users or data-rights group.”, and he was assuming I could help him because I’m the one faculty member in our department who is a member of a Rubin science collaboration or working group. But I really don’t know whether that means I’m a “Rubin PI”, and I wouldn’t have thought so! So I’m not sure if I can help him get the access he wants.
I can forward the entire contents of the Gemini email he forwarded to me, but I thought I’d start by outlining the issue, and see what other information might be needed in order for someone to get us going in the right direction.
Again, forgive my total ignorance about how all of this is supposed to work - I’d appreciate any help you can provide.
Thanks,
Katherine Rhode
Department of Astronomy
Indiana University
Instructions for how to request an account are at Getting an account on the RSP — Rubin Science Platform. Anybody who is a student or scientist at a U.S. or Chilean institution is a Rubin data rights holder, so the discussion about “Rubin PIs” and such is not relevant in this case (that is for International In-Kind Contributors).
If the observatory staffer has an IU email address, I recommend they sign up with that email, as it makes it simple for us to verify their data rights status. After requesting an account, it typically will get approved within a couple days at most.
I’m the staffer mentioned above trying to get to the asteroid data. In the portal menu I only have access to the data preview tables and images.
From Gemini: Request “LSST-Users” Group Access: Specifically ask to be added to the institutional list of Data Rights Holders. Rubin uses an IAM (Identity and Access Management) system, and she can verify your status so the observatory’s server recognizes you as a professional user.
Thanks
Hi @brsteam, I work for Rubin and can explain the Rubin asteroid data currently available to the community.
First, it sounds like you have an account on the RSP and can see the Data Preview 1 (DP1) tables in the Portal. This dataset is currently the extent of the Rubin data that is available on the RSP.
DP1 contains 431 unique solar system objects, 93 of which are labeled as Rubin discoveries. Documentation for the solar system data products in DP1 can be found here: https://dp1.lsst.io/products/catalogs/index.html#solar-system-ss. Tutorials for the DP1 solar system data products that may also be of interest are as follows:
In addition to the asteroids included in DP1, Rubin has submitted observations of nearly 13,000 newly-discovered solar system objects to the Minor Planet Center in recent months. These observations or information about these objects is not available on the Rubin Science Platform currently. However it is available from the Minor Planet Center. The best way to access it is the subset of MPC entries that include only Rubin observations (“observatory code”X05) that is maintained by the Asteroid Institute, a program of the B612 Foundation, and is available at ls.st/ast. (More information.)
The observations and Rubin data products for most this larger dataset will be made available on the RSP as part of DP2, expected to be released in July-Sept 2026.