[ASA] Reminder: LSST town-halls in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne/Perth, 27-31 October 2014

[Bryan Gaensler]

Dear colleagues,

SUMMARY: Town-hall meetings on possible Australian participation in LSST will take place over 27-31 October 2014. Register at http://caastro.org/event/2014-lsst.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an 8.4-m optical and infrared telescope about to commence construction on Cerro Pachón, Chile. Over the 10-year period 2022 to 2032, LSST will image 18,000 deg^2 of the sky in six bands, visiting every position about 800 times to reach a final co-added magnitude limit r = 27.5. LSST will be transformational for a wide range of topics in astronomy, including weak lensing, BAOs, supernovae, NEOs, stellar astronomy, galaxy evolution, Galactic structure and transients. LSST will also explore new frontiers in astronomy data management, producing 30 TB of data and approximately one million transient alerts per night. Extensive further information on LSST can be found at www.lsst.org.

LSST offers many scientific opportunities and synergies for Australian astronomers. To update the community on LSST and to initiate discussion about possible Australian participation in LSST, we will be holding a national series of town-hall meetings on LSST over the week of 27-31 October 2014. Our special guests for these events will be Professor Steven Kahn (LSST Director) and Professor Željko Ivezić (LSST Project Scientist). The town-halls will be as follows:

Mon 27 Oct:  Sydney (AAO)
Tue 28 Oct:  Canberra (RSAA)
Wed 29 Oct:  Melbourne (Swinburne)
Fri 31 Oct:  Perth (ICRAR UWA)

Each workshop will run over approximately 9.30am-3.30pm and will feature overviews from Profs Kahn and Ivezić, contributed talks from Australian astronomers on proposed LSST science, and ample time for discussion about LSST and Australian participation. We invite you to register your attendance at one of these meetings.

To sign up for your local LSST town-hall and for all logistical details, please visit :

http://caastro.org/event/2014-lsst. 

There is no fee for attendance.

We thank CAASTRO, AAO, RSAA, Swinburne, ICRAR and the LSST Corporation for their generous sponsorship of this activity.

Bryan Gaensler
CAASTRO Director