The SCOC has delivered to the Rubin Observatory Director a new recommendation for the survey strategy at the start of LSST. The recommendation is largely consistent with earlier recommendations (PSTN-056) with some modifications informed by a renewed understanding of the performance of the system on the eve of LSST, as well as by community feedback, particularly as received during the Sixth SCOC-SCs workshop. The recommendation can be found at PSTN-057.
Hello all, I wanted to highlight on this community forum a paragraph of PSTN-057 that is addressed directly to the community:
[…] as system performance continues to evolve, we remain responsive to changes and opportunities.
We invite the community to continue interacting with the SCOC (via the SCOC liaisons into the Science Collaborations and via the community forum). We recommend that the community pay particular attention to survey strategy topics on the forum, where we regularly release minutes of SCOC meetings and descriptions of simulations that broadly represent variations of the survey strategy under consideration. We also invite the community to review the content of the most recent SCOC workshop —the webpage contains slide decks and video recordings of all sessions.
That is to say: while we have made a recommendation for how to start LSST, we intend to continue to renew recommendations as needed throughout the first year of LSST as we improve our understanding of the evolving system performance and how to adapt to it to preserve our scientific objectives. As planned earlier, the SCOC is tasked to deliver an annual recommendation for adjustments to the survey, but in the early survey phases, we expect recommendations may happen much more rapidly.
We look forward to discuss our recommendation and the expectations for LSST at the Rubin Community Workshop 2026 on Tuesday July 2018.
To facilitate interactions, we have set up a Vevox (like Slido) where you can the SCOC questions ahead of the Rubin Community Workshop: Vevox
