Observing Strategy breakout(s) at the Tucson 2016 PCW

Archive LSST2016
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#1

By August, two things will (if all goes well) have happened:

  1. Version 1 of the community white paper on LSST Observing Strategy will have been advertized on the arxiv
  2. A new set of OpSim runs will have been completed, probing various new observing strategy angles

I think it could be good to use a small amount of plenary time to report on the white paper progress so far, and then have a breakout or two on the ongoing metric analyses. It would be great to hear some talks from people doing MAF analysis, especially if they have looked at the new OpSim runs. And we could do some MAF surgery to help keep the science groups moving towards their Figures of Merit. What do you think?

#2

I think it would be good to set milestones at this meeting for the most important improvements to the observing strategy Figures of Merit (FoMs) for the next round of work.

For example, many people may not be aware that sims_maf now has the capacity to handle spatial crowding (I believe Knut and Peter worked particularly hard on this): its incorporation into the diagnostic metrics and the FoMs would make it easier for those ultimately making the strategy decisions to interpret the FoMs.

#3

This is a good point - maybe we could highlight not just some of the new runs which are or will be available by August (I’ll be working on more over the summer), but some of the capabilities we’ve added to MAF, such as the crowding and new stellar density maps.
It might not be worth a long breakout for this, but it would be helpful to hear what else people would find most useful.

#4

I think a session with talks highlighting new capabilities as well as new data sounds great - especially if we follow it up with a hack session in another breakout :slight_smile: Would you be up for that?

#5

Me personally? Probably not - baby is due August 12 :slight_smile: Although if baby is late, I won’t mind pitching in remotely.
But I’m sure that we can sort something out with the people who are already well versed in MAF, plus of course @yoachim will be there.

#6

We could broaden the discussion and see how the different simulators can work with each other as well as with transient brokers to go the entire distance. In particular, I am interested in seeing how various model light-curves look at different LSST cadence and if a broker can start telling some of the simpler cases apart.

So,
(1) The big picture of brokering, and
(2) The nitty-gritty of methodology to bring about the big picture.

Folks from antares, and other broker teams (who’s out there?)?

#7

Oooooohhhh I would love a breakout on the Transient Broker, to see where we are with that software project, and also how it might fit with various projects, not just the Observing Strategy effort. I think it makes sense to do this in a separate breakout though.

@ljones We’ll miss you! But yes, @yoachim 's presence would be essential for a successful hack session. Fingers crossed he can be there!

#8

@ashish If you start a separate topic in the 2016 PCW category suggesting a Transient Broker session or two, I promise I will come and jump on it when @mentioned :slight_smile:

#9

Yes, I should be at the AHM and ready to hack.

That would actually be an interesting thing–generate a realistic population of transients, use OpSim to see which ones get observed by LSST, then how those objects would get classified/broadcast by a broker. One could tune follow-up telescope scheduling/prioritizing based on how we expect LSST + brokers to behave.

#10

A post was merged into an existing topic: Transient Brokers and characterization of variables aided by XSim

#11

Interesting, thanks @tmatheson. I like the simulation idea too, @yoachim - coudl be an interesting focus point.

@jsick we have strayed somewhat off topic here. Is there a way of making @tmatheson 's comment also show up in the new thread on a broker session that @ashish started? It’s here:

#12

Another possible topic to include would be a discussion of the Deep Drilling fields and other “non-wide-fast-deep” observing modes. Putting this in the context of the OpSim and MAF outputs is quite important.

#13

+1

We desperately need some MAF metrics to show us how well the deep drilling fields are performing.

#14

We currently have a 1.5 hour plenary session dedicated to all things Observing Strategy - this session should include a 101-level overview of LSST’s Observing Strategy, as well as more specialized updates for the community. That plenary could even include a couple of presentations by community members who have done significant MAF analysis.

@drphilmarshall (or anyone else who wants to speak up!) would you be willing to lead 1-2 breakout sessions focused on continuing community work on the Observing Strategy? If so, could you whip up a brief abstract that describes what those sessions might look like and what the audience would be?

#15

Dear all - We’re working to finalize the Community Workshop plenaries - Last call for someone to suggest an agenda for 1-2 breakouts focused on building on the community work on LSST’s global observing strategy @drphilmarshall, @yoachim, others? I’ve got 1-2 sessions on Deep Drilling + other mini surveys and 2 sessions on Event Broker’ing.

#16

I’ll be more than happy to organize an unstructured Observing Strategy Hack Session, in addition to the DDF session and our Observing Strategy Plenary. I think the best use of our time will be getting as many MAF and White Paper experts into a room as we can and then inviting all WP editors and contributors to come in and make progress on their cadence investigations. We are at a variety of different stages: conceptual metric design, MAF pseudo-coding, MAF implementation, testing different cadences against each other, and so on. Great if we can bring some new OpSIm outputs to the meeting, so the ObsStr community can have at them. And total newbies can just join a group and go along for the ride. How does this sound?