Subject: Response to your email of 2003-07-15
From: D. C. Jewitt
Submitted: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 20:53:31 -1000 (HST)
Message number: 141
(previous: 140,
next: 142
up: Index)
Hi Jeremy
Yes, I know about that and it is a good thing. The trouble is the DMT
itself. It's going to drag the LSST project down by taking too long
relative to the faster project. The existing argument from the DMT
side is essentially that "we don't believe that Pan STARRS can work".
I agree that if Pan STARRS flops then DMT is going to look golden. The
problems arise if Pan STARRS works. If it does work (and there's good
evidence to think it will) then LSST is left in a rather precarious
position as the national mopper-upper telescope. Precarious because
nobody would want to pay for it or run it under those circumstances. I
don't want that to happen.
The way out is surely to integrate the two projects more closely,
particularly to make sure that the slower national project can learn as
much as possible from Pan STARRS before committing to the more
conventional design. P-S has the jump start: why *not* learn from it?
The pipeline collaboration is a good first step, but extending to the
other aspects including focal plane, optics and telescope is even more
important. Right now I see little sense of sharing or cooperation in
these areas.
Pan STARRS will show whether the multi-element survey telescope is the
way to go or not. If it is, the logical path for LSST would be to
amplify the collecting area from the initial 4 unit telescopes of P-S
to something truly impressive, like 40 or 60 units. That would
a) allow LSST to learn and benefit from the Pan STARRS experience and
b) allow LSST to substantially beat the A-Omega offered by DMT and
probably for less cost.
That would clearly be a win-win. Moreover, such an LSST would have
several advantages beyond the huge A-Omega. The units could be located
separately (e.g. 20 or 30 in the north, 20 or 30 in the south, or
distributed in longitude) to provide weather protection and/or greater
diurnal coverage of the sky needed for the time-critical projects.
There would also be an easy upgrade path to meet new survey challenges
(just add more unit telescopes). Collaborators could easily join in by
adding more unit telescopes, as could new funding sources. It's simply
a very fertile development path to take compared to the inflexible
monolithic mirror approach.
Anyway, Mike Strauss's group exists in part to discuss such matters and
here is my attempt to get something going in response to his request.
I've taken the liberty of appending your email (complete with all those
microsoft control characters..) and sending it to the LSST discussion
group in the hope that this will trigger some...meaningful discussion.
Regards, and I hope the IAU's going well.
Dave
***
From jmould@noao.edu Wed Jul 16 19:37:46 2003
X-Sender: jrm@noao.edu
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 22:40:43 -0700
To: jewitt@ifa.hawaii.edu
From: Jeremy Mould <jmould@noao.edu>
Subject: Re: Response to your email of 2003-07-15
Mime-Version: 1.0
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.4 required=5.0
tests=BIG_FONT,CTYPE_JUST_HTML,EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,
HTML_FONT_FACE_ODD,IN_REP_TO,NO_COST,SPAM_PHRASE_02_03
version=2.43
X-Spam-Level:
<html>
Hi Dave,<br>
Actually NOAO is taking a very proactive approach to Pan-Starrs. Here's
an<br>
extract from our proposed complementary data management plan. For
more<br>
details, give Todd Boroson a call. I'm out of town at the IAU, and he's
deputy.<br>
Jeremy<br>
<br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica">NOAO has begun negotiating an MOU with
IfA/U. Hawaii that would ensure that the Pan-STARRS data would be even
more useful and accessible to the entire community than the products that
the Pan-STARRS partners will develop. We are trying to do this in a way
that Pan-STARRS sees as adding value, both by providing some risk
mitigation for them, in data storage and in software development, and by
minimizing or eliminating their need to devote resources to community
issues. <br>
<br>
Specifically, NOAO has proposed (at no cost or impact to
Pan-STARRS) to:<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>1.<x-tab> &nb
sp; </x-tab></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica">archive
the raw Pan-STARRS data by storing copies of the data as they are
taken. The Pan-STARRS partners have decided that they cannot afford
to do this themselves.<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>2.<x-tab> &nb
sp; </x-tab></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica">develop
supplementary pipelines to process the data into community-useful data
products. We would do this work in contact with MHPCC, who are
developing the Pan-STARRS pipelines. The goal would be to supplement what
they are doing (specifically to develop data products outside the limited
Pan-STARRS goals), but we would be in a good position to help with their
pipeline development efforts if needed.<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>3.<x-tab> &nb
sp; </x-tab></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica">develop
tools and web services to support community interaction with and analysis
of these data products.<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>4.<x-tab> &nb
sp; </x-tab></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica">provide
access to these data products for the community including the
critical role of scientific curatorship, understanding the pedigree of
the data, knowing what information can be credibly extracted from it, and
supporting the community efforts to use it. <br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>5.<x-tab> &nb
sp; </x-tab></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica">assist
the community, through a new archival research grants program, to do
research using archival data, and to develop techniques for doing
research on archival data.<br>
<br>
The Pan-STARRS timeline calls for beginning of operations the start
of a one-year �pre-survey� in autumn, 2006. Our goal would be
to be ready for the start of time-domain observing roughly one year
later. <br>
LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST Mailing List Server LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST
LSST
LSST This is message 141 in the lsst-general archive, URL
LSST http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dss/LSST/lsst-general/msg.141.html
LSST http://www.astro.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/LSSTmailinglists.pl/show_subscription?list=lsst-general
LSST The index is at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dss/LSST/lsst-general/INDEX.html
LSST To join/leave the list, send mail to lsst-request@astro.princeton.edu
LSST To post a message, mail it to lsst-general@astro.princeton.edu
LSST
LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST