Talk:Vera C. Rubin Observatory#Comparison with PanSTARRS and other surveys

Something I found very confusing when reading this is trying to understand exactly who owns this telescope, and how the US is building a telescope in Chile. How does the mix of private, research and government funding work? Who will own and operate it? How did they acquire the land in Chile? What is the relationship with the Chilean government? It would be great if some of these points could be clarified in the article, perhaps even in the lede. Stevage 18:49, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

: You should be able to find some of that information in the [https://www.lsst.org/scientists/scibook LSST Science Book] and/or on one of the links on the Parejkoj (talk) 18:21, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

:There are several large astronomical observatories in Chile, some for many years now. They are owned by the organizations which built them. I am not sure who owns the land. It may still belong to the Chilean government or not. Clearly, Chile has permitted these observatories to be built. In some cases Chilean astronomers have been able to observe with the telescopes. In any case, there is nothing strange or improper about the arrangements. 2601:7C0:C481:71E0:1101:1878:191:BB77 (talk) 22:06, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

The Naming section of the article has an apparent inconsistency.

Current prose is:

In June 2019, the renaming of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory was initiated by Eddie Bernice Johnson and Jenniffer González-Colón.[22] The renaming was enacted into law on December 20, 2019.[23] The official renaming was announced at the 2020 American Astronomical Society winter meeting.[12] The observatory is named after Vera C. Rubin. The name honors Rubin and her colleagues' legacy to probe the nature of dark matter by mapping and cataloging billions of galaxies through space and time.[22]

The telescope will be named the Simonyi Survey Telescope, to acknowledge the private donors Charles and Lisa Simonyi.[24]

It seems to be named both the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and also Simonyi Survey Telescope.

Is it both at the same time?

Is it named/called different things by different political jurisdictions or different astronomical groups?

Was it perhaps named one thing at one time in history and is now named something else?

We should endeavor to improve the article and clarify this. N2e (talk) 11:05, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

: The telescope structure is "the Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin Observatory", as opposed to the observatory as a whole (buildings, camera, auxtel, equipment, computers), which is "the Vera C. Rubin Observatory". In most relevant circumstances, the Rubin Observatory is what one would refer to. The naming guide makes this all clear, I hope: https://project.lsst.org/documents/name-use-guide - Parejkoj (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

The article defines LSST with {{!tq|formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)}} and then uses "LSST" 162 times. Should those occurrences be replaced with {{tq|Rubin Observatory}} or similar? Or, if those uses of LSST instead mean {{tq|Legacy Survey of Space and Time}}, shouldn't the article instead define LSST to mean that? —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:11, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

:VCRO? But yes, you're right (I think), LSST is the former name. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:37, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

::I made an edit. If it's wrong, I'm sure someone will let me know. :-) —Quantling (talk | contribs) 19:03, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

: Please do not abbreviate Vera Rubin Observatory, per the [https://rubinobservatory.org/media/name-guidelines naming guide]. LSST was retro-nymed to "Legacy Survey of Space and Time", so it's still valid to use LSST to refer to the survey and data. - Parejkoj (talk) 19:15, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

::@Parejkoj I see that LSST is the abbreviation for the survey, but is it still also the abbreviation for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory itself? If not, I am still thinking that we should not use LSST for the latter. Thoughts? —Quantling (talk | contribs) 19:31, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

:::See the summary statement in the [https://rubinobservatory.org/media/name-guidelines naming guide]: "NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory ... will perform the Legacy Survey of Space and Time using the LSST Camera and the Simonyi Survey Telescope." Does that help with the distinction? - Parejkoj (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

::::Thank you. The survey and camera are both LSST, but I am still thinking that the observatory itself is not LSST. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 19:38, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

::Thank you for the [https://rubinobservatory.org/media/name-guidelines naming guide]! I happened to choose one of the acceptable names given there, {{tq|Rubin Observatory}}. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 19:36, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Now that Rubin has started taking data, I think we'd be better off moving the "Comparison with other sky surveys" to another page, something like [List_of_largest_optical_reflecting_telescopes], but more for surveys. We're going to start having a lot more Rubin-specific information here, as more data is released and papers are published. This kind of comparison is useful, but deserves its own page, instead of just living here. Thoughts? - Parejkoj (talk) 19:53, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

:Similarly I think a lot of the content in Construction Progress and Overview needs to be spun out. Maybe "Vera C. Rubin Observatory planning"? For example the Image data processing is speculative details and probably should not have been included in the encyclopedia in the first place. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:24, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

The article lists comparisons with other surveys, including PanSTARRS, but doesn't actually say much about how those compare to LSST. That includes performance or, for lack of actual performance data, predicted performance. For example, Pan-STARRS#Solar System, referring to [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-international-astronomical-union/article/next-decade-of-solar-system-discovery-with-panstarrs/707CBE1A4413B8C60E829A36C1C420DF] from 2006 (without explicitly citing it, I think), states that PanSTARRS is expected to find about 100,000 Jupiter trojans, at least 20,000 Kuiper belt objects, and (from the original source) about 10 million main belt asteroids, during the first ten years of operation (2010-2020). It ended up discovering about 5% of that. LSST, in comparison, expects to find 3.7 million main belt asteroids (or >5 million, depending on whose prediction you take) and 32,000 trans-Neptunian objects, with most of those being found during the first year.[https://sorcha.space/][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF4qLScqf-M] Renerpho (talk) 23:35, 23 June 2025 (UTC)