arXiv subjects

Richard Dubois

Publications and source records attributed to Richard Dubois.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The On-Sky Performance of the LSST Camera CCD Array

The focal plane of the LSST Camera contains 189 individual science CCDs, arranged into 21 raft tower modules, along with 4 wavefront and 8 guider CCDs located in 4 additional corner RTMs. Altogether, the LSST Camera CCDs compose the largest focal plane ever constructed. The LSST Camera is the primary instrument of Rubin Observatory, which will begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time in 2026. In this paper, we describe the on-sky performance of the LSST Camera CCDs, from receipt at NSF/DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in May 2024 to on-sky observations during the first year of operations. We discuss the process to establish functionality of several CCDs which were affected by an electrical short and faulty analog-digital converter, optimizations of readout timing in response to changes in the survey strategy, and implementation of enhanced focal plane safety measures through an active clearing mechanism on the CCDs. Finally, we discuss sensor features observed on-sky, and global performance during the first year of operations. The operations to date of the LSST Camera CCDs have demonstrated the capability of performing a wide, fast, and deep optical imaging survey of the entire southern sky at the Rubin Observatory.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2025

DESC DC2 Data Release Note

In preparation for cosmological analyses of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC) has created a 300 deg$^2$ simulated survey as part of an effort called Data Challenge 2 (DC2). The DC2 simulated sky survey, in six optical bands with observations following a reference LSST observing cadence, was processed with the LSST Science Pipelines (19.0.0). In this Note, we describe the public data release of the resulting object catalogs for the coadded images of five years of simulated observations along with associated truth catalogs. We include a brief description of the major features of the available data sets. To enable convenient access to the data products, we have developed a web portal connected to Globus data services. We describe how to access the data and provide example Jupyter Notebooks in Python to aid first interactions with the data. We welcome feedback and questions about the data release via a GitHub repository.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Integrating the PanDA Workload Management System with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will produce an unprecedented astronomical data set for studies of the deep and dynamic universe. Its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will image the entire southern sky every three to four days and produce tens of petabytes of raw image data and associated calibration data over the course of the experiment's run. More than 20 terabytes of data must be stored every night, and annual campaigns to reprocess the entire dataset since the beginning of the survey will be conducted over ten years. The Production and Distributed Analysis (PanDA) system was evaluated by the Rubin Observatory Data Management team and selected to serve the Observatory's needs due to its demonstrated scalability and flexibility over the years, for its Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) support, its support for multi-site processing, and its highly scalable complex workflows via the intelligent Data Delivery Service (iDDS). PanDA is also being evaluated for prompt processing where data must be processed within 60 seconds after image capture. This paper will briefly describe the Rubin Data Management system and its Data Facilities (DFs). Finally, it will describe in depth the work performed in order to integrate the PanDA system with the Rubin Observatory to be able to run the Rubin Science Pipelines using PanDA.

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arXiv2021

The LSST DESC DC2 Simulated Sky Survey

We describe the simulated sky survey underlying the second data challenge (DC2) carried out in preparation for analysis of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) by the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC). Significant connections across multiple science domains will be a hallmark of LSST; the DC2 program represents a unique modeling effort that stresses this interconnectivity in a way that has not been attempted before. This effort encompasses a full end-to-end approach: starting from a large N-body simulation, through setting up LSST-like observations including realistic cadences, through image simulations, and finally processing with Rubin's LSST Science Pipelines. This last step ensures that we generate data products resembling those to be delivered by the Rubin Observatory as closely as is currently possible. The simulated DC2 sky survey covers six optical bands in a wide-fast-deep (WFD) area of approximately 300 deg^2 as well as a deep drilling field (DDF) of approximately 1 deg^2. We simulate 5 years of the planned 10-year survey. The DC2 sky survey has multiple purposes. First, the LSST DESC working groups can use the dataset to develop a range of DESC analysis pipelines to prepare for the advent of actual data. Second, it serves as a realistic testbed for the image processing software under development for LSST by the Rubin Observatory. In particular, simulated data provide a controlled way to investigate certain image-level systematic effects. Finally, the DC2 sky survey enables the exploration of new scientific ideas in both static and time-domain cosmology.

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arXiv2020

MAORY AO performances

The Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics RelaY (MAORY) should provide 30% SR in K band (50% goal) on half of the sky at the South Galactic Pole. Assessing its performance and the sensitivity to parameter variations during the design phase is a fundamental step for the engineering of such a complex system. This step, centered on numerical simulations, is the connection between the performance requirements and the Adaptive Optics system configuration. In this work we present MAORY configuration and performance and we justify theAdaptive Optics system design choices.

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arXiv2018

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pachón in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$σ$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $δ<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.

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arXiv2010

Fermi results on gamma-ray binaries

The past decade has presented a revolution in the field of observational high energy gamma-ray astrophysics with the advent of a new generation in ground-based TeV telescopes and subsequent GeV space telescopes. The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) was launched in August 2008 and has offered unprecedented sensitivity and survey capabilities in the 30 MeV - 300 GeV energy range. Presented here are the results from the first two years of LAT observations of galactic binary systems including the definitive detections of LSI+61 303, LS 5039 and Cyg X-3. These sources and others are discussed in context with their known TeV and X-ray properties. The LAT data provides new understandings and pose new questions about the nature of these objects. The identification of an exponential cutoff in the spectra of both LSI+61 303 and LS 5039 was unexpected and poses challenges for explaining the emission mechanisms and processes which are in operation within these systems.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2007

The Use of Weighting in Periodicity Searches in All-Sky Monitor Data: Applications to the GLAST LAT

The light curves produced by all-sky monitors, such as the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer All-Sky Monitor and the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), generally have non-uniform error bars. In searching for periodic modulation in this type of data using power spectra it can be important to use appropriate weighting of data points to achieve the best sensitivity. It was recently demonstrated that for Swift BAT data a simple weighting scheme can actually sometimes reduce the sensitivity of the power spectrum depending on source brightness. Instead, a modified weighting scheme, based on the Cochran semi-weighted mean, gives improved results independent of source brightness. We investigate the benefits of weighting power spectra in period searches using simulated GLAST LAT observations of gamma-ray binaries.

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