Tim W. Bond | Searcharxiv

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↗

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.

astro-ph↗