Where to find summary of which nights were DDF and which were commissioning/LSST/other

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1

Hi all,

I already know about the nightsum reports and I am clicking through them, but I am trying to get a bird’s eye view of which nights (or which stretches of time) where DDF and which nights (or stretches of time) where other observation strategies. I can’t see myself clicking through ever single night log since commissioning began in september 2025, unless there is absolutely no other way for me to get this information.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

3

The ddf visits are interlaced within observations of other parts of the sky in the standard LSST survey strategy, so there are no nights which are only ddfs.

During commissioning there were some nights where there were only engineering visits vs standard survey visits (which are include a variety of observing modes, including ddfs).

4

There are other ways to access the visit metadata for a period of time - are you looking for visits that are part of dp2 or are you looking for more recent information?

5

Thanks a lot for replying and sorry the question was poorly asked.

I am looking at alert data I gathered between September 2025 and July 2026. I am describing the gathering of the sample and the fact that observation strategies are mixed across different time periods, for example around public alert releas in February/march there was a lot of DDF data and large lightcurves sent then. The lightcurves were then cropped at some point because systems on the Rubin and broker end struggled. I have recollections from slack convos but I am writing a paper and was wondering if there was a reference.

If there isn’t it’s not a big deal, the qualitative description is probably enough but if there is something quantitative I would want to report that.

6

Hi @heloise, there is a Commissioning tutorial that demonstrates access to a temporary LSSTCam visits database, and I think it has (most of) what you’re looking for: 101. LSSTCam visits database — Prompt Products. An executable notebook and access to the file itself is available via the Rubin Science Platform at data.lsst.cloud (under the Tutorials menu, look in the Commissioning folder). The file contains visit metadata from April 2025 to June 2026, so is missing July, thus “most of”. But take a look at that and let us know if it’s sufficient? In the meantime I’ll look into updating the file to include metadata from July 2026.

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Thanks that is exactly what I needed to learn to get the statistics I need to add to my data. Thanks a lot :folded_hands: