The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Final Design Phase

Association Of Universities For Research In Astronomy, Inc., Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

AST-1227061, PI: William S. Smith The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large-aperture, wide-field, ground-based telescope that will survey the visible sky in six photometric bands. The images, alerts, and resulting catalogs will be made available to the United States and Chilean communities with no proprietary period. The LSST project was selected as the highest priority ground-based project by the 2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey. The survey is currently planned to last for ten years and will produce a database suitable for answering a wide range of pressing questions in astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. The same data set can be used to characterize the properties of dark energy and dark matter; produce nearly instant alerts of detected optical transients such as exploding stars in distant galaxies; discover and provide orbits for potentially hazardous near-Earth objects; and catalog billions of objects with both high astrometric precision and unprecedented photometric depth. No other facility in operation or planned will have the simultaneous wide area and rapid temporal sampling to address these issues. The project has already met the requirements of a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of the full construction project. The present award, supplemented by contributions from LSST member institutions, will allow the LSST Project to build on their existing efforts to meet the requirements of a Final Design Review (FDR) and to be ready for construction. The priorities for this support are: 1) Moving the project to become construction-ready by completing the specifications and the bidding process for the major components of the telescope and support facility; 2) Developing improved algorithms for data processing with emphasis on those that drive the sizing model for computing hardware; 3) Implementing the PDR recommendations, which provide important guidelines for moving the project toward construction readiness; 4) Implementing an Earned Value Management System and updating costing and other documentation required for FDR; 5) Completing staffing of the senior management team that will carry out the construction phase; and 6) Continuing risk reduction through hardware and software prototyping and system simulations. The LSST data management system needs innovative, large-scale database techniques. To meet the science requirements, the project will need to use supercomputing technologies and create a general-purpose data and algorithm-parallel framework that will be available as open source software reusable on any high-performance, parallel scientific application. Continued development of these plans will yield much broader benefits beyond the astronomical community. This award also supports the project's Outreach Advisory Board and the continued development of educational and public outreach activities intimately connected with the planned scientific program.