Dear all:
Between that and other activities, we got a bit overwhelmed and didn’t get a chance to post on what we’ve been up to. So here’s finally a summary of the flurry of SSO-related Rubin activity this month:
- On Feb 2nd, we submitted 698,926 observations of some 64,346 known objects. These are already proving fantastic for understanding of astrometric precision (and biases).
- On Feb 9th, we submitted 246,754 observations of 19,630 candidate discoveries linked with Ari Heinze’s implementation of Heliolinc. While the majority were accepted, we’re still analyzing some that have been stuck in the MPC queues.
- On Feb 12th, we next submitted another 29,234 observations of 671 discoveries. These included more NEOs.
- On Feb 16th we sent in a batch focuse on TNOs: 2,971 observations of 147 known objects, and 6,803 observations of 409 new candidate discoveries. These were discovered with TNO-specific codes developed by Kevin Napier and Matt Holman as a part of their in-kind commissioning contributions. That’s nearly 8% of the total presently known sample (!).
- On Feb 24th (i.e., two days ago), we started broadcasting public Rubin alerts. That night and yesterday we emitted 235,218 associations. These observations are high cadence, concentrated in two fields – around COSMOS and M49 – that have templates, and are of high cadence (think hundreds of visits over a few hours). Good work by Jake Kurlander & the entire AP team!
- The 3I paper has been accepted (congratulations to Colin Orion Chandler, Pedro Bernardinelli and collaborators!). I’m working on the 3I astrometry submission to the MPC (expecting to make it in the next few days).
- At the same time, we’ve been internally preparing for Data Preview 2 processing (with cutoff dates for input data this week).
Note that the numbers I cited above are submissions – the actual number presently available in the MPC is still somewhat lower. Some objects still making their ways through the MPC processing queues, and a few we sent ended up being duplicates from previous submissions. The Asteroid Institute’s Rubin data bundles at Vera C. Rubin Observatory Observations Submitted to the Minor Planet Center continue to be the best place to access the accepted data (with a huge thanks to A.I.'s Alec Koumjian and Joachim Moeyens for setting this up).
What’s next
The expectation is the telescope will continue observing Cosmos+M49 tonight, then (following some engineering work over the weekend) switch to observing with (approximately) LSST baseline cadence for the next two weeks.
For the Solar System, I expect:
- There will be real-time alerts for another few 100k known asteroid observations tonight (COSMOS+M49), followed by a ~thousand/night for the next two weeks starting Monday March 2nd (when we switch to LSST-like cadence).
- We expect to be submitting to the MPC both individual (many observation) tracklets from these fields, as well as heliolinc linkages. This will require some QA (plus the JTM is intruding – see below), so probably another ~week or two until we share these.
- We’ll also build tracklets and submit from sources detected on direct images; no estimates on expected yields yet, as we’ll need to see what the telescope gives us.
Over the next two weeks, there may be a brief hiatus in new deliveries as the team flies for a big Rubin technical meeting to Chile spanning the next two weeks. But after that’s behind us, I’m expecting we’ll start making new submissions roughly on a weekly basis.
Bottom line: Rubin’s online and the data are flowing. Expect new submissions with increasing regularity.