This topic was raised in 2020, but we now have some early results. The Science Book gave the LSST saturation limits as u, g, r, i, z, y = 14.7, 15.7, 15.8, 15.8, 15.3 and 13.9. I believe that I saw some recent alerts data with much brighter magnitudes. Was that likely due to the alerts process or is that a possibility that saturation is happening at brighter magnitudes than originally anticipated?
Hi, just a heads up that I have moved this post to support to get more visibility. If you have any to hand could you please provide some example diaSourceIds for the alerts in question?
Hi Suber, just double checking if you had any examples of alerts that you would like us to take a closer look at?
Otherwise, to give a general answer to your question the saturation limits you quote were estimated before real LSSTCam data was taken, with typical seeing and photometric (i.e cloudless) conditions assumed. Therefore the saturation limits would be expected to vary somewhat with actual observing conditions. E.g. poor seeing and cloud cover could lead to brighter objects appearing unsaturated in a given visit. As for alerts processing, I had a quick look and I do see some with the pixelFlags_saturated flag, but this flag appears when there is at least one saturated pixel (which might just be the peak pixel in some cases).
I will mark this answer as the solution for now, but please unmark it if you have some examples that still look unusual.