Dear Rubin support team,
My email has been verified and my Rubin Science Platform account application is currently under review.
I am writing because I would like to know whether I can obtain access to real Rubin/DP1 data, or the appropriate TAP/API token permissions, for a very small real-data smoke test of an independent diagnostic software project.
By way of context, I previously developed JWST-RCA, an independent open-source residual-covariance diagnostic framework for public JWST spectroscopic products. The JWST-RCA software release is archived on Zenodo with DOI:
JWST-RCA is a command-line and guided-menu diagnostic tool that operates downstream of calibrated or extracted JWST products. It quantifies residual channel-channel covariance, estimates effective independent channels / N_eff, evaluates stacking-efficiency degradation, applies empirical null tests, generates advisor-style diagnostic summaries, produces diagnostic figures, and writes reproducible Markdown/HTML/PDF reports. Its purpose is diagnostic: it provides statistical evidence about covariance-aware interpretation, not astrophysical verdicts.
I am now developing RUBIN-RCA, a related Rubin/LSST-oriented diagnostic tool for tabular survey products. RUBIN-RCA follows the same general philosophy, but is adapted to Rubin/LSST-style data products such as catalogs, light curves, sky patches, coadd-derived tables, and alert-derived tables.
RUBIN-RCA is already at an advanced local prototype stage. It currently includes:
- a command-line interface and interactive terminal menu,
- catalog, lightcurve, patch, coadd, and alert builders,
- sample-by-feature matrix construction,
- residual covariance diagnostics,
- effective independent evidence / N_eff summaries,
- stacking-efficiency diagnostics,
- empirical null tests,
- advisor-style diagnostic outputs,
- HTML/Markdown reports with quick-look figures,
- compare-reports functionality across runs,
- machine-readable summaries such as rca_summary.json and comparison_summary.json,
- a DP1 TAP preview mode that generates the intended ADQL query without executing it.
The tool does not replace Rubin pipelines and does not make astrophysical verdicts. Its purpose is to provide a post-pipeline statistical diagnostic layer that may help users and reviewers assess whether a given product should be interpreted with covariance-aware caution.
The missing step is that I have not yet been able to run RUBIN-RCA on real Rubin/DP1 data. For the first real-data smoke test, I only need access to a very small DP1 Object-like catalog sample through TAP/API, for example a few hundred rows with per-band flux/error columns such as g/r/i PSF fluxes. The table would be converted locally into the compact RUBIN-RCA input format:
object_id, ra, dec, filter, flux, flux_err
The intended test is simply to verify that RUBIN-RCA can ingest a real exported Rubin/DP1 catalog sample and generate:
- a diagnostic HTML report,
- quick-look figures,
- workflow_summary.json,
- rca_summary.json.
This is not a large-scale download request and not a scientific validation claim. It is only a small reproducible real-data ingestion smoke test for an independent diagnostic software prototype.
Could you please advise whether my account, once approved, can obtain the appropriate TAP/API access or token permissions for this limited DP1 catalog smoke test? If this is not the correct procedure, I would also appreciate guidance on the recommended way to access a small real Rubin/DP1 catalog sample for this kind of independent diagnostic software test.
Thank you very much for your help.
Best regards,
Francisco Javier Martínez Sánchez