Wednesday

The Rubin Observatory, thought the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), will open new routes to understand the true nature of the ``Dark Universe''. However, the survey will pose tremendous challenges on many fronts—from the sheer size of the data that will be collected to its modelling and interpretation. The interpretation of the data requires sophisticated simulations as closely resembling the actual data as possible. The cost of these simulations, the uncertainties in our modelling abilities, and the fact that we have only one Universe that we can observe opposed to carrying out controlled experiments, all come together to create a major test for our data-analysis capabilities.
The Rubin Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) is carrying out an ambitious end-to-end simulation project that attempts to provide a faithful view of the Universe as will be observed by the Rubin Observatory. Scientists here in the UK are a crucial part of this work and, engaging the significant infrastructure available through STFC's IRIS programme, have undertaken significant computing campaigns for both simulation of telescope observations and processing of these simulated observations to produce data preview products.
In this talk, we will describe how we employ IRIS infrastructure to achieve our ambitions, highlight some of the challenges and how we addressed them, plus outline our future plans in the run-up to the beginning of the full LSST survey in late 2022.