LSSTScienceCollaborations/ObservingStrategy

Comments from Jason Kalirai (SAC) on Chapter 7 (Magellanic Clouds)

Opened this issue · 3 comments

michaelstrauss commented

  • I suggest moving the grouping of the 6 science themes to be before the list of the themes. I think this comes across clearer if you first create the bin of "Galaxy formation and evolution" and define it, and then input items 1-3 under it. These are all aimed at learning about the MCs themselves. Then, create the second bin of "Stellar Astrophysics and Exoplanets" and list items 4-6 under that. These are examples of using the convenience of the Clouds to tackle fundamental stellar astrophysics. For the latter, the authors correctly highlight the importance of the Clouds over general MW sightlines given the cospatial nature of the stars. But, this alone undersells the importance. All of the stars in nearby galaxies are also cospatial...the MCs are special because of this and because of their proximity that allows us to explore deeper into the luminosity function of the stellar populations.

  • I was confused about the part of this section related to finding transiting exoplanets in LMC stars. First, it would be nice to show some of the analysis in the paper itself, hopefully backed up by simulations of LSST's performance. Second, if the motivation is to tackle this in the Clouds due to their low metallicity, why not simply propose for such an experiment in a more nearby metal-poor system (with or without LSST).

7.2.1 – the opening paragraph is missing the science hook. There is a clear explanation for how/why LSST proper motions are going to be better than anything before, but the text doesn't actually say what we will learn from such measurements. Is it the case that the resulting constraints on the orbit or past accretion history break some current uncertainty in models of the MC evolution?

  • related, it wasn't clear why individual stars are needed. Shouldn't the proper motion precision being referenced here be for the population as a whole?
drphilmarshall commented

@dnidever @knutago Here's some good feedback for your Magellanic Clouds chapter! Can you take a look, and formulate a response, please? Thanks!

drphilmarshall commented

Knut reports that he will do what he can and try to delegate what he can’t. (This month is going to be very busy for him)

@knutago Looks like the task is mainly reorganization and adding explanatory text - hopefully this shouldn't take too long! Thanks :-)

drphilmarshall commented

OK, I implemented Jason's reorganization, and then pasted his review comments into the appropriate places in the tex, to be fixed in v2.