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A Reference Survey

Summary Statistics

Duration
10 years
Total visits
2,685,127
Visit length
34 seconds (2x15s exposure, 2x1s shutter, 1 readout)
Average slew time
6.4 seconds
Ratio of observe + slew time to possible observe time
0.739667
Number of nights with no observations
397

 

Proposal Statistics

Deep Wide Survey

20,000 square degrees to a uniform depth of

u: 26.5 g: 27.4  r: 27.5  i: 26.9  z: 26.1  y: 24.9

Northern Ecliptic

3300 square degrees

~2.1 pairs per lunation

Deep-Drilling

70 square degrees

154 sequences of 100 days with > 85% of the requested observations

Galactic Plane

1700 square degrees to uniform depth of

u: 26.1  g: 26.5  r: 26.1  i: 25.6  z: 24.9  y: 23.5

South Pole

1700 square degrees to a uniform depth of

u: 25.5  g: 26.4  r: 26.0  i: 25.3  z: 25.0  y:23.4

 

Depth

The 5 sigma coadded limiting magnitude (or depth) in each filter for each field is plotted in Aitoff projection for a 10-year simulated survey with the five proposals described above. The 20,000 square degrees between -68 and +8 declination (excluding the crowded regions near the Galactic center) have limiting magnitudes of 26.5, 27.4, 27.5, 26.9, 26.1 and 24.9 in u, g, r, i, z, and y respectively.

 

Pairs of Visits

Showing the distribution of pairs of visits that are separated by 15 to 60 minutes per lunation, this plot is a figure of merit for determining asteroid orbits.  There were 933,767 non-overlapping pairs in g, r, i, & z, yielding ~6 pairs per lunation for most of the survey area.  Three pairs per lunation is needed to determine an orbit well enough to recover the object at a later time.

 

Source: American Astronomical Society 213th Meeting, Poster Exhibit, "LSST: Cadence Design and Simulation", K.H. Cook et al., 460.04