Data Download

The rubin_scheduler.data module provides scripts to download data required to run the scheduler, as well as to check the expected versions of the data. It also provides a utility to interpret the location of $RUBIN_SIM_DATA_DIR, checking both $HOME/rubin_sim_data and the environment variable $RUBIN_SIM_DATA_DIR and returning the appropriate path.

Downloading Necessary Data

To use the software in rubin_scheduler, an additional approximately 500MB of data must be installed somewhere on the system. This directory should be shared with rubin_sim and schedview if using those packages.

By default, the needed data files are downloaded to $HOME/rubin_sim_data. If you would like the data to save elsewhere, you should set the RUBIN_SIM_DATA_DIR environment variable. In bash/zsh:

export RUBIN_SIM_DATA_DIR="/my/preferred/data/path"

This environment variable, if used, should always be set before running rubin_scheduler packages. Another option is to add a sym-link to your home directory:

ln -s /my/preferred/data/path ~/rubin_sim_data

To download the appropriate data for your version of rubin_scheduler:

scheduler_download_data

This creates a series of directories at $RUBIN_SIM_DATA_DIR:

  • scheduler (containing data used for setting up the scheduler footprint)

  • site_models (containing data used for the weather histories)

  • skybrightness_pre (containing a very minimal set of precalculated skybrightness data files)

  • utils (containing data used for the utilities, such as an approximate LSST footprint map)

Note that the data will only be downloaded for the directories which do not already exist, regardless of whether the version on disk is up to date. To force an update to a version which matches the rubin_scheduler version:

scheduler_download_data --update

This can also be applied only to certain directories, using the –dirs flag, or to force an update of any or all directories using –force.

Downloading more extensive pre-calculated skybrightness files (such as necessary to simulate a full survey) is covered in Downloading Skybrightness Data.