In the latest Early Operations Update it was mentioned that “A total of more than 27K pre-LSST visits have been acquired since the Early Operations period began in late October 2025. For comparison, ~23K science program visits were acquired during the on-sky commissioning period from April-September 2025.”
The community does not know the distribution of these 27,000 images on sky and what the cadence of these observations was. A summary pointing database and coverage plots was provided for the ~23,000 science frames taken in on-sky commissioning on the survey strategy website. Could we get that for the pre-LSST visits later October 2025 to now?
The regular updates on the survey strategy about the progress of the SV survey were very helpful. As the Observatory is moving towards more LSST-like observations, can similar updates be provided in terms of sky coverage plots and updated pointing databases?
As a partial solution, new data files that have all the visits and tracts that contribute to Data Preview 2 (DP2), and a tutorial that demonstrates how to read and visualize that data (e.g., make sky coverage maps), and how to cross-match with coordinates of interest, has been approved by leadership and is current in internal review. I’ll report back here when I have made it available.
However, it will be limited to only the data that will be part of DP2. AFAIK, a live version of the Promptly-processed visits metadata will only be available when the Prompt Products Database (PPDB) comes online later this year.
Why can’t a file be made like the SV survey pointing information summary that’s stored on the RSP or accessible for download off the survey strategy website that has the visits from January 2026 onward until now? There’s capability to do that as it was done for the SV. It doesn’t need to updated on a daily basis but the Observatory can’t tout all these observations have been taken, but we the communtiy don’t know where they are on sky and in what filters especially when there’s no planned start date for the LSST.
The RA, Dec, limiting mag, filter/band, airmass, and time of obs, information is easy to provide as it’s already available in some internal database. That’s how the SV pointing database was made available. Why not provide it to the community as was done for SV for the Early Science Optimization observations from January 2026 to April 15th? At least we in the community could use that information in grant and observing proposals to talk about what might be available in a DR1 as single visits from what’s already been taken as there’s now now big uncertainty on the start date of the LSST and the release of DR1.
It’s even described here how it the SV pointing sqlite data file was made. I don’t see how the same thing could not be run with the dates changed to provide the same type of output for the observations taken from January 1 to today.
Yes my apologies, I didn’t mean to imply it was impossible to supply a static Jan-Apr summary file. I just described what was definitely about to become available (the DP2 inputs files, up to Jan), and that a live version that always covers up to “now” would need the PPDB, which is not ready yet. Once the new DP2 inputs files and tutorial is released, I’ll pursue approval for metadata of more recent observations, yes.
Is there anyway this request can be asked in parallel? For those that rely on prompt products, DP2 is valuable and will produce some very good science but for applying for observing and funding proposals that will cover the next few years it’s a lot weaker case to get funding now as the Observatory has no date for the start of the LSST and there’s a strong reason for review panels to question whether the dates in RTN-011 should be believed as the uncertainty in deliverables is not decreasing. In most cases dates were pushed out in the latest version or changed to pending.
Being able to show that the Observatory has actually covered some sky since January (and especially this month) would help bolster the case that the Observatory is nearly there in these proposals and that there is a reason to start believing some of the dates.
I understand that US funding proposals are typically in November, but that’s not the case for international partners. I already have collaboration members drop out of writing observing and funding proposals because there isn’t enough information at this moment to demonstrate that the Observatory will be ready for next semester or the next year.
If the community being able to quote numbers of observations taken from Jan-through now would help. Getting a file means I can make a sky map to show there is FBS observations happen that cover the ecliptic while someone else could count up the number of visits to in COSMOS.
There’s already an example notebook for the SV version of this database. So all that would be needed is for the Observatory to provide the sqlite file with similar fields.
Yes absolutely, I understand why recent more observations metadata than is available in the SV file is wanted. Now that the DP2 inputs files and tutorials are available via the RSP, I’m working on putting an appropriate file and tutorial together and pursing approval to release them. Estimate it to take a couple weeks yet to do both those things.