This is a movie of three galaxy formation simulations I ran as part of my research.
The color of each pixel represents the temperature of the gas (blue for cold and green for hot) and the brightness of each pixel represents the density (dim for low density bright for high...
Portrait of the Galaxy is a snapshot from a 3d rendering of a galaxy that displays the complex structure of the gas component of the simulation. This gas component is difficult to observe in real telescopes but with visualizations and simulations like these we can begin to understand how to...
Massive Black Holes, millions to billions of times more massive than our sun, exist in the centers of most galaxies. However, the formation and evolution of these objects through accretion of gas and mergers with other black holes is still a great mystery. LISA, a future space-based gravitational wave detector,...
Levitation—the rising or hovering of an object in apparent defiance of gravity—is a captivating phenomenon with a wide range of applications. In this visualization, we demonstrate our newly discovered form of fluid dynamical levitation of small particles that may be 10, 100, or even 1000 times as dense as the...
Firefly is an interactive tool that allows users to fly through any 3 dimensional dataset by rendering it on-the-fly. Here we present simulation data created as part of the FIRE galaxy formation collaboration. Interactively exploring data generates powerful intuition and helps one isolate regions of interest in the data using...
Hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation have proven to be incredibly useful tools in understanding the nature of star formation. Many modern simulations have identified the importance of and implemented new and powerful schemes for including the stellar feedback processes that regulate star formation, such as the FIRE simulations. The FIRE...