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University of Arizona

Department of Planetary Sciences / LPL

Graduate Program

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Graduate Computing Resources

The Lab

Once you are admitted into the department, an LPL account will be created for you automatically. Please contact LPL Central Computing Systems (LCS) directly at sys if you have any preference on your username while you are here at LPL. Once you have an account, the bounties of the LCS computers are available to you. You can find out more aobut those resources at the LPL Central Computing Systems (LCS) page, and they also have a helpful FAQ.

The Graduate Computers

The lab is generous enough to provide a computer to each graduate student if he/she does not have a personal computer they would like to use or does not have one provided by their advisor. These computers are Mac Minis (depending on availability) or Solaris thin-clients that connect directly to the central LPL UNIX server and are capable of connecting to a Windows Server that can run a variety of software including:

• MS Office 2003
• Adobe Photoshop
• EndNote
• Mathematica 5.2
• MATLAB 7.0.4
• SPSS
• Maple
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Acrobat Professional

Computers and software needed for coursework and research are supported by either the LPL Systems staff or by technical engineers working on the specific spacecraft missions.

A large part of the software available are open source packages or locally derived tools; however, commercial packages are used as needed, such as IDL, Super Mongo, Metbase, etc.

While Unix is a heavily used tool for research, its use is not exclusive. The computer systems staff supports MS Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and Linux variants.

PIRL

The Planetary Image Research Laboratory (PIRL) supports a major subnet facility. The PIRL system is operated by Joe Plassman and is available to all Planetary Science graduate students for remote sensing research projects; contact Joe Plassmann (joep@pirlmail.lpl.arizona.edu) or Linda Hickcox (linda@pirlmail.lpl.arizona.edu) Kuiper SS room 429 for a user's account. Further information about PIRL is available at the PIRL website: http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/.

University of Arizona

Naturally, the University itself operates a large set of systems and provides a number of computing services. To learn more about them, check out the University's Computing Services page.

If you're unfamiliar with UNIX, the best thing to do is to ask another student to help you get started. Manuals for various programs are located in the LPL Graduate Student Library (in the printer room). There are also some books up in the LPL library (room 409) that you might find useful. Your best references for navigating the system, however, will probably be the other students who have already tried to figure out the same problems. Don't be afraid to ask!!