Eddy Chandra, Katrin Heitmann, James Ahrens, Salman Habib, and Alex Pang
09/01/2009 09:00 AM
Computer Science
Visually striking large scale structures (LSS) such as galaxy filaments and clusters have been observed in cosmological surveys, and are composed of large numbers of galaxies. Even though there are theories for the formation and evolution of these cosmological structures, much remains to be understood, especially in the nonlinear regime of structure formation. This problem is now being attacked with the aid of high accuracy cosmological simulations. Associated with these simulations, there is a new challenge for data analysis. In this paper, we describe how visual analytics can help identify and characterize a particular set of features of interest in the evolution of the universe, the multistreaming events. As the name implies, different velocities (directions and magnitudes) can be observed in locations of such events. It is believed that these events are precursors to the formation of the LSS.
