Polar Experiment Network for Geospace Upperatmosphere Investigations

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Polar Experiment Network for Geospace
Upper-atmosphere Investigations
Allan Weatherwax, Siena College

• PENGUIn Science Team
• Lanzerotti, L J, New Jersey Inst. of Tech.,
  Dept. of Physics, Newark, NJ
• Inan, U S, Stanford Univ., Dept. of Electrical
  Engineering, Stanford, CA
• Rosenberg, T J, Inst. for Physical Science and
  Tech., Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD
• Mende, S B, and Frey, H U, Space Sciences Lab,
  Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA
• Engebretson, M J, Petit, N, Augsburg College,
  Minneapolis, MN
• LaBelle, J, Dartmouth College, Dept. of Physics,
  Hanover, NH
• Clauer, C R, Univ. of Michigan, Atmospheric,
  Oceanic and Space Sciences, Ann Arbor, MI
• Fukunishi, H, Tohoku University, Dept. of
  Geophysics, Sendai, Japan

We gratefully acknowledge support from the
National Science Foundation
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All-Sky Imager VLF Receiver Imaging
Riometer Fluxgate Magnetometer Search Coil
Magnetometer LF/MF/HF Receiver Weather
Station Others???
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Real-time Data Retrieval from Remote Antarctic
Observatories using Iridium Communications Links
Wind/solar-powered Automatic Geophysical
Observatory (AGO) facility at site P1.
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• Problem
• Siena is a small liberal arts college that, in
  collaboration with other institutions including
  the University of Maryland and NJIT, has amassed
  two decades worth of polar geophysical data. They
  wanted to make the entire data set easily
  accessible to interested parties. Previously,
  researchers were required to send an email
  request to the investigators and wait until the
  request was fulfilled manually.
• Solution
• Siena College initiated the development an
  interactive of data portal. Costs were kept
  minimal by
• reusing legacy software,
• leveraging open source software in a modular
  approach,
• and where needed, developing custom software.

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Legacy Software Over the years, Siena College
and the University of Maryland built an IDL
library for accessing data and creating plots
from their dataset. This library was leveraged
for automatically generating plots, on demand,
via the web portal. Custom Software The custom
software written for this application can be
split into three sections. First, the data
needed to be indexed and loaded into the
database Second, the database needed to be
efficiently searched to find requested data
lastly, retrieved data needed to be presented to
the user.
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Open Source Linux Linux was chosen as the
operating system for it's stability. Apache To
make the entire application web accessible, a web
server needed to be selected. Apache
(http//www.apache.org) was used, as it is the
most popular web server available, open source or
otherwise. It is available for all popular
platforms, so the possibility for scaling the
portal up in the future was left open. Python
Python (http//www.python.org), an open source,
object oriented language was selected for it's
ease of use, and for it's ability to be
integrated with Apache to develop web
applications. To perform this integration, the
mod_python (www.modpython.org) Apache module, and
it's PSP handler was used. MySQL In order to
index the growing dataset efficiently, a database
server was required. For this, we selected the
open source MySQL (www.mysql.com). MySQL was
selected for it's portability, it's speed, and
it's ability to interact with the other open
source packages selected for this application.
GDL In an effort to use as much open source
software as possible, GDL (GNU Data Language,
(gnudatalanguage.sourceforge.net) was evaluated,
but due to some incompatibilities, was not able
to be used. IDL for linux was used instead.
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http//66.194.178.60/index.psp