News & Highlights
New Scientific Visualization Capability for Astrophysics Research
08.19.11
Data analysis and visualization experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division have developed a new software capability for visualizing simulations of cosmological structure formation. The NAS visualization work allows astrophysicists supporting research projects for the agency's Science Mission Directorate to visualize complex gas motions driven by a variety of forces, including hydrodynamic forces and gravity.
Taking early advantage of this new capability is NAS user Renyue Cen, Princeton University, who is using visualizations of stars and neutral hydrogen to determine whether his simulation shows an expected "gas stripping" phenomena. Cen is investigating how the environmental effects of gas stripping alter the growth of super massive black holes and galaxy evolution.
A resulting NAS-produced animation simultaneously displays all three of the matter components in cosmological simulations: dark matter, stars, and gas. A new algorithm allows the gas, star, and dark matter data to be rendered using ray casting—a technique that produces images by calculating, for each pixel, how a ray of light would traverse the domain of the dataset.
The animation follows the evolution of these components over eight billion years. Simulations are derived from the University of San Diego's Enzo code, which generates AMR files, where the mesh has multiple levels of refinement as required by the calculation.
The visualization tool was developed based on new research that allows variables to be interpolated without discontinuities in adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) data with arbitrary resolution changes between adjacent meshes. Previous solutions only supported resolution changes that are factors of two. AMR is a technique where a simulation code automatically adjusts mesh resolution during the computational run.
With this new capability, the NAS visualization team will help researchers better understand the complexities of cosmological structure formation, enhancing their ability to understand and interpret the formation of galaxies and the universe.
For more information contact:David Ellsworth
david.ellsworth@nasa.gov
