Description
Organisers: Graham Smith; co organisers: Steve Ardern, Astha, Michelle Collins, Thomas Cornish, Suhail Dhawan, Dimple, Paul Giles, Chris Lintott, Bob Mann, Garreth Martin, Steph Merritt, Mahdieh Navabi, Clara Pennock, Ana Sainz de Murieta, Jason Sanders, Matthew Temple, Roy Williams, Jacco van Loon
The Vera C. Rubin Observatoryโs Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will be a major pillar of the UK astronomy programme for the next two decades. Its unprecedented combination of spatial, spectral and temporal coverage enable it to probe a broad range of astrophysical phenomena, across all areas of astronomy, from near-Earth asteroids to distant quasars, the dark energy believed to drive the Universeโs accelerating expansion, and much more.
NAM2025 coincides with a major milestone of broad impact across the UK and international communities: the first release of on-sky Rubin data to data rights holders. These data have already been obtained during observations with the commissioning camera in late 2024. Science Verification observations with LSSTCam are also expected to be well underway in summer 2025.
In addition to the parallel session there is also a lunchtime session. We aim to encourage and enable the widest possible participation and engagement with the early data, with a particular focus on early career researchers.
We aim for a balance between five themes, across these five sessions:
o Introduction: Rubin/LSST, LSST:UK, and the international Science Collaborations
o Early career science: plans for early and future science with the Rubin data
o Tutorials and examples: how to access, filter, and manipulate Rubin data
o Community insights: technical and scientific preparations by LSST:UK researchers
o Engagement: an introduction to the LSST:UK engagement programme
In addition to talks from across the community, the sessions will include training, Q+A for early career researchers, a hack session, and a facilitated discussion.
[Lasair][1] is the UK Community Broker for transient alerts from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. I will explain the systemโs capabilities, how users can achieve their scientific goals, and how Lasair is implemented. Lasair offers users a kit of parts that they can use to build filters to concentrate their desired alerts. The kit has novel light-curve...
In my role as the LSST:UK's Production Scientist, I have worked closely with the Rubin Data Management Team during ComCam observations and running up to the release of Data Previous 1. I will provide a summary of the ComCam observing campaign, the key datasets released in DP1 and how to access them, and were to go to look for further information. If time permits, I will also summarise some of...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatoryโs Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is set to revolutionize astronomical research by providing unprecedented optical data. However, integrating near-infrared observations is key to unlocking the full potential of LSST, particularly for studying dusty environments and older stellar populations. The LSST-IR pipeline has been developed to combine LSSTโs optical...
The LSST Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) Science Collaboration (SC), currently composed of 230 members spanning the globe (with about 18 UK members), aims to lead many of the large-scale LSST investigations of growing supermassive black holes in AGNs. I will briefly summarize the membership and organization of the AGN SC. I will then highlight its recent and ongoing activities, including...
The fundamental nature of dark matter so far eludes direct detection experiments, but it has left its imprint in the cosmic large- and small-scale structure. Extracting this information requires accurate modelling of structure formation for different dark matter theories (e.g., the axion), careful handling of astrophysical uncertainties and consistent observations in independent cosmological...
I will present recent results on the relationship between galaxy evolution and dark matter halos using deep extragalactic surveys. I use LSST-quality optical data from HSC and VOICE, and Euclid-quality near-infrared data from VIDEO and UltraVISTA, to measure galaxy clustering in the COSMOS, XMM-LSS, and ECDFS fields.
Together, these fields cover an area of ~10 square degrees, which is five...
The exceptional statistical power and imaging depth of LSST will enable unprecedented constraints on the cosmological model, as well as the nature of dark matter and dark energy. However, accurately estimating ensemble redshift distributions and efficiently marginalising over their uncertainties remain major challenges. In this talk, I present a novel approach that leverages Self-Organising...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will commence the 10 year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) this year in 2025. Within 60 seconds of the shutter closing LSST will issue rapid, public alerts of transient sources found in each visit. To detect these sources templates of the static sky are required to conduct difference imaging. However, in Year 1 of LSST the sky is visited for the first time...
I this talk I will present a forecast for the cosmological constraints expected from all the galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses identified in the Rubin Observatory (LSST). In particular, the constraints are provided by the following SL sub-probes: lensed quasars, lensed supernovae, double source-plane lenses (DSPL), and galaxy-galaxy lens Einstein Rings, both with and without follow-up...
The โnull-signal templateโ method is a new, data-driven approach to testing the significance of potentially periodic signals in quasar light curves. NST employs Bayesian statistics to differentiate between supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) signals and the complex noise of individual quasars. It accounts for correlated noise as a damped random walk and provides an alternative hypothesis...
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is expected to produce image coadds reaching nearly 30 magnitudes per square arcsecond across the entire Southern sky. Low-surface-brightness (LSB) science thus provides the survey's largest potential discovery space, as such depths have never been achieved in a survey of its size before. Whether we can fully exploit the survey for LSB science,...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatoryโs Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will transform extragalactic astronomy by providing an unprecedented volume of imaging data. With limited resources for spectroscopic follow-up, photometric redshifts will be essential for studying distant galaxies. However, the choice of intergalactic medium (IGM) absorption model can significantly impact photometric...
In photometric observations the light of galaxies is observed through a reduced number of filters. This lack of information translates into uncertain estimates in the redshift of said galaxies. This uncertainty is one of leading contributors to the error budget of Stage-IV surveys meaning that it needs to be treated with care. In this talk I will present current efforts to incorporate these...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will monitor tens of millions of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) over a period of 10 years, with an average cadence of 3 days across six broad photometric bands. This unprecedented dataset will enable robust characterizations of AGN UV/optical variability across a wide range of AGN physical properties. However, existing tools...
We present the properties of 56 massive galaxies selected via optical variability in the VST-COSMOS survey at $z<1$. VST-COSMOS achieves a similar depth in a single visit (approximately 24.6 mag in the r-band) and has an eleven-year temporal baseline comparable to the upcoming LSST. However, it covers a much smaller area of just 1 deg$^2$. We compare the rest-frame colours, morphologies,...
With its impressive wide-fast-deep capabilities, LSST is poised to revolutionise the field of optical transient astronomy, with orders of magnitude improvements in detection rates across many transient types. Additionally, these capabilities also allow LSST to detect rarer transients. With a surge of recent discoveries of lensed stars in Hubble and JWST imaging, we investigate whether the...
