Turning Scientific Data To Cinema

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When Galaxies Collide

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, B. Robertson, L. Hernquist

Computational models theorizing how galaxies merge provided the foundations for this visualization, depicting two galaxies smashing into one another before settling into a single elliptical galaxy.

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The Universe Takes Shape

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications

NASA researchers crunched more than 749 gigabytes of raw computational data at the NCSA to lay the groundwork for this visualization of the universe's larger structure emerging. The simulation begines some 20 million years after the Big Bang and continues through the present day--more than 13.5 billion years later.

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What Webb Will See

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing and B. O'Shea, M. Norman

When the James Webb Space Telescope is operational, it will peer deeper into the universe--and into the past--than we ever have before, where it will see the first galaxies forming just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

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Entering the Orion Nebula in "Hubble 3D"

Courtesy of Warner Bros. and IMAX Corporation

Approaching the interior valley of the great Orion nebula, where stars are being born. This is a complex 3D scientific-based digital model. Visualizations were developed and rendered at NCSA, University of Illinois, where the AVL team collaborated with "Hubble 3D" Director Toni Myers of IMAX and the Space Telescope Science Institute in the design of the sequences for the film.

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Star Birth in the Orion Nebula, via "Hubble 3D"

Courtesy of Warner Bros. and IMAX Corporation

The hottest of the stars (the Trapezium group) flood the nebula with ultraviolet light that heats and makes the gas fluoresce, gradually carving out the valley we see here. The valley is filled with tadpole- shaped proplyds, each one giving birth to a new star. Visualizations were developed and rendered at NCSA, University of Illinois, where the AVL team collaborated with "Hubble 3D" Director Toni Myers of IMAX and the Space Telescope Science Institute in the design of the sequences for the film.

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