This video explores how astronomers are utilizing the TeraGrid as a distributed computing environment to compute massive simulations that visualize simulations of galactic formation and evolution in order to further understand the cosmos.
Fun Facts:
The radiotelescope scene took a single computer more than 25 days to compute and render.
Images from NASA’s Chandra Xray telescope were “dimensionalized” to provide a stereoscopic 3D view of galaxies.
Astronomical data was used to precisely position the stars in various scenes.
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center contributed nearly 20 gigabytes of scientific data.
The observatory featured in the first scene of the video is the Kirkwood Observatory located on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
