LSST telescope and site status

William J. Gressler

doi:10.1117/12.2232173

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27 July 2016 LSST telescope and site status

William J. Gressler

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Proceedings Volume 9906, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VI; 99060J (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2232173
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project¹ received its construction authorization from the National Science Foundation in August 2014. The Telescope and Site (T and S) group has made considerable progress towards completion in subsystems required to support the scope of the LSST science mission. The LSST goal is to conduct a wide, fast, deep survey via a 3-mirror wide field of view optical design, a 3.2-Gpixel camera, and an automated data processing system. The summit facility is currently under construction on Cerro Pachón in Chile, with major vendor subsystem deliveries and integration planned over the next several years. This paper summarizes the status of the activities of the T and S group, tasked with design, analysis, and construction of the summit and base facilities and infrastructure necessary to control the survey, capture the light, and calibrate the data. All major telescope work package procurements have been awarded to vendors and are in varying stages of design and fabrication maturity and completion. The unique M1M3 primary/tertiary mirror polishing effort is completed and the mirror now resides in storage waiting future testing. Significant progress has been achieved on all the major telescope subsystems including the summit facility, telescope mount assembly, dome, hexapod and rotator systems, coating plant, base facility, and the calibration telescope. In parallel, in-house efforts including the software needed to control the observatory such as the scheduler and the active optics control, have also seen substantial advancement. The progress and status of these subsystems and future LSST plans during this construction phase are presented.

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William J. Gressler "LSST telescope and site status", Proc. SPIE 9906, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VI, 99060J (27 July 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2232173

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