Introduction and Scope
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a wide-field 8m telescope that will survey the southern sky over a period of 10 years. Each LSST observation (a visit) has a duration of 34 seconds consisting of 2 back-to-back 15-second exposures re-pointing to the next sky position. The LSST will implement a "scheduler" that will optimize the observing cadence against science priorities and local observing conditions. To this end the LSST project has developed an operations simulator (OpSIm) that models the temporal sequencing of visits given parameters of science proposals, constraints of hardware performance and historically based observing conditions (seeing, sky brightenss and weather).
However, missing from these inputs is a model for the sky brightness, transparency and cloud cover with the needed spatial and temporal resolution that is suitable for detailed algorithm optimization needed for the LSST scheduler.
This will be where Chris Stubbs uploads the information regarding the newly installed Cerro Pachon all sky camera.