Open AccessYear 1 of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST): Recommendations for Template Production to Enable Solar System Small Body Transient and Time Domain Science
Author(s) -
Megan E. Schwamb,
Mario Jurić,
Bryce Bolin,
L. Dones,
Sarah Greenstreet,
Henry H. Hsieh,
L. Inno,
R. Lynne Jones,
Michael S. P. Kelley,
Matthew M. Knight,
W. T. Reach,
Tom Seccull,
C. Snodgrass,
David E. Trilling
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
research notes of the aas
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2515-5172
DOI - 10.3847/2515-5172/ac090f
Subject(s) - planetesimal , observatory , transient (computer programming) , solar system , computer science , large synoptic survey telescope , sky , solar observatory , astronomy , real time computing , physics , operating system , quantum mechanics , magnetic field
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will discover ∼6 million solar system planetesimals, providing in total over a billion photometric and astrometric measurements in 6 broad-band filters. Rubin Observatory's automated data reduction pipelines will employ difference imaging; templates representing the static sky will be subtracted from the nightly LSST observations in order to identify transient sources, including solar system moving objects. These templates are expected to be generated by coadding high quality images of the same pointing from the previous year's survey observations. The first year of LSST operations will require a different method for generating templates, if solar system discoveries are to be reported daily like Year 2 and beyond. We make recommendations for template production in the LSST's first year and present the opportunities for solar system small body transient and time domain science enhanced by this change.