CaltechAUTHORS
Published July 2023 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

LSST Survey Strategy in the Galactic Plane and Magellanic Clouds

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network
  • 2. ROR icon University of Delaware
  • 3. ROR icon Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
  • 4. ROR icon University of Washington
  • 5. ROR icon Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
  • 6. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 7. ROR icon Heidelberg University
  • 8. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 9. ROR icon University of Southampton
  • 10. ROR icon University of Michigan–Dearborn
  • 11. ROR icon Konkoly Observatory
  • 12. ROR icon Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences
  • 13. ROR icon Eötvös Loránd University
  • 14. ROR icon Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo
  • 15. ROR icon South African Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • 16. ROR icon University of Cape Town
  • 17. ROR icon University of the Free State
  • 18. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Abstract

Galactic science encompasses a wide range of subjects in the study of the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds, from young stellar objects to X-ray binaries. Mapping these populations, and exploring transient phenomena within them, are among the primary science goals of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time. While early versions of the survey strategy dedicated relatively few visits to the Galactic Plane region, more recent strategies under consideration envision a higher cadence within selected regions of high scientific interest. The range of galactic science presents a challenge in evaluating which strategies deliver the highest scientific returns. Here we present metrics designed to evaluate Rubin survey strategy simulations, based on the cadence of observations they deliver within regions of interest to different topics in galactic science, using variability categories defined by timescale. We also compare the fractions of exposures obtained in each filter with those recommended for the different science goals. We find that the baseline_v2.x simulations deliver observations of the high-priority regions at sufficiently high cadence to reliably detect variability on timescales >10 days or more. Follow-up observations may be necessary to properly characterize variability, especially transients, on shorter timescales. Combining the regions of interest for all the science cases considered, we identify those areas of the Galactic Plane and Magellanic Clouds of highest priority. We recommend that these refined survey footprints be used in future simulations to explore rolling cadence scenarios, and to optimize the sequence of observations in different bandpasses.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. This work was supported by the Preparing for Astrophysics with LSST Program, funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation through grant 2021-2975, and administered by Las Cumbres Observatory. R.A.S. gratefully acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant No. 2206828. This work was authored by employees of Caltech/IPAC under Contract No. 80GSFC21R0032 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Y.T. acknowledges the support of DFG priority program SPP 1992 "Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets" (TS 356/3-1). R.B. acknowledges financial support from the project PRIN-INAF 2019 "Spectroscopically Tracing the Disk Dispersal Evolution." R.Sz. acknowedges support from the Lendület Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, project No. LP2018-7/2022. Facility: Rubin - . Software: Metrics Analysis Framework, Astropy, pyLIMA.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
122553
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20230726-216909500.14

Funding

Heising-Simons Foundation
2021-2975
NSF
AST-2206828
NASA
80GSFC21R0032
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
TS 356/3-1
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
LP2018-7/2022

Dates

Created
2023-08-17
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-08-17
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)