Welcome to the Pleiades Computational Cluster

The Pleiades Cluster is dedicated to the analysis of data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), whose goal is the detection of gravitational waves and their use as a new tool of astronomical discovery. Pleiades is one component of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Data Grid as well as a member of the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL), an international computational laboratory of unprecedented scale and scope, comprised of heterogeneous computing and storage resources in the U.S. and world-wide, linked by high-speed networks and operated as a single system for the purposes of interdisciplinary experimentation in Grid-enabled, data-intensive scientific computing.

At Penn State, Dr. Lee Samuel Finn of the Penn State Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry is working in conjunction with Academic Services and Emerging Technologies' High Performance Computing Group and the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics to establish a tier 2 computing center.