The LSST Data Management System

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST; Ivezic et al. 2008) is a large-aperture, wide-field, ground-based survey system that will image the sky in six optical bands from 320 to 1050 nm, uniformly covering approximately 18000 deg2 of the sky over 800 times. The LSST is currently under construction on Cerro Pachon in Chile, and expected to enter operations in 2022. Once operational, the LSST will explore a wide range of astrophysical questions, from discovering “killer” asteroids to examining the nature of Dark Energy. The LSST will generate on average 15 TB of data per night, and will require a comprehensive Data Management system to reduce the raw data to scientifically useful catalogs and images with minimum human intervention. These reductions will result in a real-time alert stream, and eleven data releases over the 10-year duration of LSST operations. To enable this processing, the LSST project is developing a new, general-purpose, high-performance, scalable, well documented, open source data processing software stack for O/IR surveys. Prototypes of this stack are already capable of processing data from existing cameras (e.g., SDSS, DECam, MegaCam), and form the basis of the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC) Survey data reduction pipeline.