1. New Member Onbarding

This doc goes through the main tools that are worth installing as a new group member. While you might not use all of these right away, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll end up using most if not all of them eventually.

1.1. Slack Group

We encourage heavy use of the Slack group. In general if you have science-related questions, please post them in public channels for a few reasons:

  1. A member of the group will likely get back to you faster than Desika can

  2. There is almost always a member of the group that knows more about a given topic than Desika

  3. The question can inspire discussion, motivate changes, and at the least, will be searchable for the future student/postdoc/colleague.

Please note a few additional items regarding professional behavior in this Slack Group:

  1. The group includes a wide range of people, including active members in Gainesville, former members, collaborators/colleagues who are in industry, and collaborators/colleagues around the world.

  2. One of the best parts about the slack group is the positive atmosphere, and encouragement when responding to help questions.

  3. Please note that the slack group is an extension of your professional in-person life at UF, and should be treated as such (abiding by all UF rules and regulations, including a very strict no harassment policy).

  4. This is a paid group, meaning messages are saved for posterity so that we can use the group as a resource going forward.

  5. Party Parrots always encouraged P

1.2. Hipergator

HiPerGator is our supercomputer, and you can find notes on usage here:

https://desikasgroupofawesome.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro_to_hpg.html

In specific, see the Python Anaconda Environments section for installing and using a Conda environment.

1.3. Overview of Group Tools

In our group, we use a wide variety of tools to run, analyze, and visualize our galaxy formation simulations. Below we describe the most commonly used software in the Group:

  1. Powderday: https://powderday.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. (Installation notes here always supercede those on the desikasgroupofawesome.readthedocs page, though hopefully they’re synced up.)

  2. Caesar: https://caesar.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

  3. yt: https://yt-project.org/

1.4. So what should you be doing?

A good way to start is:

  1. Make sure you can install and use a Conda environment

  2. Install yt within this environment

  3. Install caesar within this environment

  4. Install powderday within this environment

  5. Make sure you can run one of the example problems that ships with powderday on the HiPerGator cluster using the queue system (this last one will be much harder/more time consuming than 1-4).

1.5. Excercises

  1. Powderday: successfully run the gizmo_mw_zoom powderday run that ships with the code (in pd/tests/SKIRT)

  2. Caesar: use a snapshot from a galaxy cosmological simulation on HiPerGator like: /orange/narayanan/desika.narayanan/gizmo runs/simba/m25n512/output/snapshot_305.hdf5 to:

    1. Create a Caesar file

    2. Plot the cumulative mass distribution functions for all of the dark matter halos in the snapshot, and the galaxies

    3. Use the above snapshot to plot a histogram of the gas fraction (Mgas/Mstellar)

    4. Use the above snapshot to plot a histogram of the dust to gas ratios of all the galaxies