JWST Science Simulation: Galaxy Collision

  • Released Friday, October 29, 2010
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The Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) collaborated with NASA and Drs. Brant Robertson and Lars Hernquist to visualize two colliding galaxies that interact and merge into a single elliptical galaxy over a period spanning two billion years of evolution. The scientific theoretical model and the computational data output were developed by Drs. Brant Robertson and Lars Hernquist. AVL rendered more than 80 gigabytes of this data using in-house rendering software and Virtual Director for camera choreography. This computation provides important research to understand galaxy mergers, and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will provide data to test such theories. When two large disk-shaped galaxies merge — as will happen within the next few billion years with the Milky Way galaxy and its largest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy — the result will likely settle into a cloud-shaped elliptical galaxy. Most elliptical galaxies observed today formed from collisions that occurred billions of years ago. It is difficult to observe such collisions now with ground-based telescopes since these collisions are billions of light-years away. JWST will probe in unprecedented detail those distant epochs, and provide exquisite images of mergers caught in the act of destroying disk galaxies.

AVL at NCSA University of Illinois



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, B. Robertson, L. Hernquist

For usage permission, please contact the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois communications@lists.ncsa.illinois.edu Thank you.

Release date

This page was originally published on Friday, October 29, 2010.
This page was last updated on Monday, January 22, 2024 at 12:17 AM EST.


Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:
  • JWST Media Resource Reel 2010 (ID: 2010014)
    Friday, May 28, 2010 at 4:00AM
    Produced by - Clay Anderson (NASA)
  • JWST Science Animations (ID: 2010070)
    Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 4:00AM
    Produced by - Clay Anderson (NASA)

Papers used in this visualization