This page collects the different sub-pages on my site devoted to visualization and animations of our numerical simulations. Click on any of the pages below to browse the different animations and get additional information about the simulations.
Cosmological Simulations: Feedback Changes Everything
Movies from the FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments) Project
These movies show simulations of individual galaxies forming, starting at a time when the Universe was just a a few million years old (redshift of 100). They follow the region that will become a single galaxy by the present time, tracing the evolution of dark matter and gas, which eventually turns into stars. …
Cosmological Simulations:Flying Through a Milky-Way Like Galaxy
Just like the movies here, these movies are from the same set of simulations of individual galaxies forming, starting at a time when the Universe was just a a few million years old (redshift of 100). They follow the region that will become a single galaxy by the present time, tracing the evolution of dark matter and gas, which eventually turns into stars. …
Latte
Here is a video explaining the breakthroughs and new physics in our “Latte” simulations, the highest-resolution simulations of a Milky Way like galaxy that have ever been run to the present day, presented in Wetzel et al. 2016 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05957…
Feedback from Massive Stars: Movies
These movies show simulations of isolated disk galaxies under the influence of “feedback” from massive, young stars. In the absence of such feedback, the gas in the galaxies would cool rapidly (in a time much shorter than a single orbital time), collapsing into dense ‘nuggets’ that run away to higher and higher densities until it eventually forms stars. …
Galaxy Mergers: Now with Feedback from Massive Stars
Gas-Rich Starburst Merger: Stars & Gas-Rich Starburst Merger: Gas
These movies shows the gas and stars in a pair of gas-rich merging galaxies (similar to the galaxy M82), as they collide on a relatively “gentle” orbit in their major merger. …
AGN Fueling: Movies
In a recent series of papers, the first of which is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.13115, we present the first-ever cosmological simulations that follow how material gets “all the way down” from cosmological scales to fuel/power super-massive black holes and quasars. …
Dust and Gas in Astrophysical Systems
Dust is everywhere in astrophysics — literally! It contains most of the heavy elements, forms the building blocks of planets, and dramatically alters our view of everything in the Universe. Yet its dynamics are remarkably poorly-understood. We recently discovered a new super-class of instabilities that manifest in a myriad of different ways, whenever dust moves through gas. …
Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics
Our group studies a wide variety of astrophysical fluid dynamics and plasma physics. See the GIZMO page here for more details. A few examples of very basic problems are shown here in movies made for illustrative purposes.
Voyage of Time Animations
These animations were pre-renders for the cinematic release of Voyage of Time. See http://voyageoftime.imax.com/#videos for more
Stars, Star Clusters & Molecular Clouds
Many members of our group study the formation of individual stars, star clusters, molecular clouds, and structures within the interstellar medium. These movies were put together by Mike Grudic and David Guszejnov, studying the origin of stellar masses, the formation and destruction of molecular clouds, their collapse into individual stars and star clusters, and the dynamical evolution of those clusters after they form.
AGN Driving Outflows in Galactic Nuclei
Here I’ve collected some more recent simulations of ours following fueling and feedback of super-massive black holes, in simulations with a detailed treatment of the physics of the interstellar medium (ISM) and star formation. Also see the “AGN Fueling” movies …
Additional FIRE Galaxy Visualizations: the CGM/IGM and Kinematics
Here are some additional FIRE visualizations made by our collaborators, of various quantities that didn’t quite fit into one of the groups above or below here.
Gallery of (Simulated) Galaxies
This Gallery shows a series of mock Hubble Space Telescope images of our FIRE simulated galaxies at the present-day. We stress, every galaxy here is a simulation run from cosmological initial conditions — essentially starting with the cosmic microwave background and basic physical equations, and evolving to present day. …
A Gallery of Milky Way & Andromeda - like systems
As part of the FIRE project, we have simulated a large number of galaxies that resemble the Milky Way or Andromeda, including some “Local Group” systems which include both, together, like our own neighborhood. Shea Garrison-Kimmel has compiled a large number of movies of these different systems, side-by-side, such as the example shown above. …
Galaxy Mergers: Movies
These movies show typical simulations of major galaxy mergers. In the mergers, two Milky Way-like disk galaxies with a 2:1 mass ratio are placed in an initial parabolic orbit. The disks are constructed in equilibrium, with properties corresponding to observed disk galaxies, and include stellar and gas disks, central spheroidal bulges, and black holes, within a dark matter halo. …
Additional High-Quality Images
Here are some additional images, chosen somewhat at random from our published papers, for those interested. I frequently get asked if people can use these in talks: yes, but please credit the actual publication or collaboration!
Here are some additional images, chosen somewhat at random from our published papers, for those interested. …
For a simple archive of all the movies above (and others), go to http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~phopkins/movies/