Just over a week until the Vera Rubin Observatory’s First Look Event, June 23 (online presentation at 11:00 am Eastern Time). Observatory testing and calibration has peaked, and is now wrapping up loose ends, since… the remaining tasks are becoming… Read More »Vera Rubin Update (Mid-Jun 2025)
As part of the Vera Rubin survey project, tests and metrics should be used to hone the plan. Those metrics are now being used on a simulation of the sky survey. Try the homepage, https://sorcha.space . For papers describing these… Read More »Rubin Sim Given
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) will hold its biannual (Summer) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska this week. Even though this “general” meeting includes the sub-meetings of the Laboratory Astrophysics Division and Solar Physics Division, there’s still relevant content here for the… Read More »Summer AAS Meeting 2025 (Anchorage)
The June issue of Astronomical Journal (vol. 169 #6) brings us: B. T. Bolin, C. Fremling, M. Belyakov, et al. Keck and Gemini Characterization of Hayabusa2# Rendezvous Target 1998 KY26 303 adccbe(The DES Collaboration) Photometry of Outer Solar System Objects… Read More »Note, Paper: Eyes on Target
Commissioning of the Vera Rubin Observatory (Simonyi Telescope, LSSTCam, etc.) continues apace. Aside from glitches with a few CCDs in the detector array, and the Camera cooling system, things are looking good. How good? An outside review panel has surveyed… Read More »Vera Rubin Update: First Look Event
Commissioning of systems on the Vera Rubin Observatory continues. Tuning of the active optics systems (NOT adaptive optics) continues. This past week, both Alpha Centauri and Earth’s natural satellite became visible. These bright objects served as crude calibrators, allowing tests… Read More »Vera Rubin Update (Mid-May 2025)
…speaking of SiTian… The latest issue of Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (vol. 25 #4) is a special Issue: Pathfinder of the SiTian Project – Progress of Mini SiTian Huang, Y. Liu, J. Wu, H. et al. The Mini-SiTian Array: A… Read More »Note, Papers: SI on SiTian
In Experimental Astronomy (all-digital, no physical issues) vol. 59, #3: Xiang, W. Jia, P. Li, Z. An Optimization Framework for Wide-Field Small Aperture Telescope Arrays Used in Sky Surveys 32 s10686-025-10004-0 Covering the sky requires more than one telescope: in… Read More »Note, Paper: Better Net-Tels
…see Day 1, Day 2 Now, in Day 3, we get into the telescopes (and one antenna) for both detection and tracking: Session 4: Near-Earth Object (NEO) DiscoveryThe Pan-STARRS Search for Near-Earth Objects: 10+ Years old and going strong… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 3
Early-2025 activity on the mountaintop was largely removing ComCam, and integrating the final LSSTCam onto the telescope. Per my last update, that camera change has happened; time for another post. As observing is getting closer and closer, so too will… Read More »Vera Rubin Update (LATE-April 2025)