April 2004
Visualization of a plume
|
This SCD visualization lab image of a thermal starting
plume illustrates a relatively simple simulation within the complicated
dynamics of the Sun. In the Sun’s outer layers, gas cools rapidly. The temperature
change creates many down-flowing, cold plumes. (Imagine the opposite
of the warm, upward plumes you see from chimneys on cold days). This
image of two different data fields shows a cold plume descending into
a region of increasing density, as it would into the interior of the
Sun. “The aim is to understand how stable these plumes are in order
to estimate how deeply they penetrate into the solar interior after being
generated in the upper surface layers,” explains Mark Rast (HAO).
It took Joey Mendoza (SCD) about two months to create a full animation
of more than 400 images from this simulation to illustrate Mark’s
research. He converted four terabytes of data from a raw form into a
more interactive format before making the animation. In the new format
the data can be analyzed and visualized at multiple resolutions. “The
one thing really special about it was that there were so much data involved,” Joey
said. “After I converted the data, I just did standard things like
make color maps and scales.”
This work is part of an ongoing effort by John Clyne (SCD) to enable
interactive data analysis and visualization of very large data sets.
•Nicole Gordon
Also in this issue...
