Visualizing Supernova Simulations

Supernova mark the death of massive stars and are responsible for the production of many of the elements in the Universe. The search for the explosion mechanism of core collapse supernovae and the computation of the nucleosynthesis in these spectacular stellar explosions is one of the most important and most challenging problems in computational nuclear astrophysics. Researchers have created and performed realistic multidimensional simulations that help them ascertain how core collapse supernova explosions occur. Given the complexity of the science, simulation techniques, and corresponding data, visualization is an essential tool. The image shows simultaneous visualization of scalar and vector fields. Particular care was made to ensure accurate depiction of the flow motion. The basis of this visualization capability is a novel 4D data representation for vector field data, which supports highly efficient visualization calculations. See the animation which reveals how the flow is moving differently in the inner and outer regions of the shocked flow.

The simulation was done by John Blondin, North Carolina State University. The visualization was made by Hongfeng Yu and Kwan-Liu Ma, University of California-Davis.