Browsing by Author "Wechsler, Risa H."

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    Optimization of the Observing Cadence for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: A Pioneering Process of Community-focused Experimental Design
    (2022) Bianco, Federica B.; Ivezić, Željko; Jones, R. Lynne; Graham, Melissa L.; Marshall, Phil; Saha, Abhijit; Strauss, Michael A.; Yoachim, Peter; Ribeiro, Tiago; Anguita, Timo; Bauer, A. E.; Bauer, Franz E.; Bellm, Eric C.; Blum, Robert D.; Brandt, William N.; Brough, Sarah; Catelan, Márcio; Clarkson, William I.; Connolly, Andrew J.; Gawiser, Eric; Gizis, John E.; Hložek, Renée; Kaviraj, Sugata; Liu, Charles T.; Lochner, Michelle; Mahabal, Ashish A.; Mandelbaum, Rachel; McGehee, Peregrine; Neilsen, Eric H., Jr.; Olsen, Knut A. G.; Peiris, Hiranya V.; Rhodes, Jason; Richards, Gordon T.; Ridgway, Stephen; Schwamb, Megan E.; Scolnic, Dan; Shemmer, Ohad; Slater, Colin T.; Slosar, Anže; Smartt, Stephen J.; Strader, Jay; Street, Rachel; Trilling, David E.; Verma, Aprajita; Vivas, A. K.; Wechsler, Risa H.; Willman, Beth
    Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a ground-based astronomical facility under construction, a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, designed to conduct a multipurpose 10 yr optical survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Significant flexibility in survey strategy remains within the constraints imposed by the core science goals of probing dark energy and dark matter, cataloging the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. The survey's massive data throughput will be transformational for many other astrophysics domains and Rubin's data access policy sets the stage for a huge community of potential users. To ensure that the survey science potential is maximized while serving as broad a community as possible, Rubin Observatory has involved the scientific community at large in the process of setting and refining the details of the observing strategy. The motivation, history, and decision-making process of this strategy optimization are detailed in this paper, giving context to the science-driven proposals and recommendations for the survey strategy included in this Focus Issue....
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    Simultaneous Estimation of Large-scale Structure and Milky Way Dust Extinction from Galaxy Surveys
    (2021) Bravo, Matias; Gawiser, Eric; Padilla, Nelson D.; DeRose, Joseph; Wechsler, Risa H.
    The high cosmological precision offered by the next generation of galaxy surveys hinges on improved corrections for Galactic dust extinction. We explore the possibility of estimating both the dust extinction and large-scale structure from a single photometric galaxy survey, making use of the predictable manner in which Milky Way dust affects the measured brightness and colors of galaxies in a given sky location in several redshift bins. To test our method, we use a synthetic catalog from a cosmological simulation designed to model the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. At high Galactic latitude (vertical bar b vertical bar greater than or similar to 20 degrees) and a resolution of 1 degrees (7'), we predict the uncertainty in the measurement of dust extinction, E(B - V), to be 0.005 mag (0.015 mag). This is similar to the uncertainty of existing dust maps, illustrating the feasibility of our method. Simultaneous estimation of large-scale structure is predicted to recover the galaxy overdensity delta with a precision of similar to 0.01 (similar to 0.05) at 1 degrees (7') resolution. We also introduce a Bayesian formalism that combines prior information from existing dust maps with the likelihood of Galactic dust extinction determined from the excursion of observed galaxy properties.