Rubin Observatory Plans for an Early Science Program

Abstract

Rubin Observatory is committed to enabling high-impact science prior to the first annual data release of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). In this document we provide the plans for a dedicated Early Science Program designed to realize that goal. Those plans include the release to the community of Rubin commissioning data products in the form of two Data Previews, the ramping up of the transient Alert stream, and the first LSST data release, DR1, based on the first 6 months of the LSST survey. We give an overview of which data products can be expected in each of these releases and present plans to implement incremental template generation to augment alert production in the early phases of the survey. The Rubin Operations team will work closely with the science community to optimize the Early Sciencefor the time-domain and solar system science achievable in the first year of operations. This is a living document; both it and the Early Sciencewill continue to evolve over the course of commissioning and pre-operations in response to the state of the as-built system and to community guidance.