Abstract

N-body simulations attempt to solve the n-body problem numerically and determine the trajectories of the n point masses. The result of these calculations is a huge amount of data (on the order of tens of gigabytes) detailing the positions and other properties of each body. To effectively draw conclusions from this data, one must employ scientific visualization to create images and movies that illustrate the structure of the data. This thesis seeks to apply the computer animation technique of skeletonization to the volume data produced by n-body simulations in order to extract the inner structure of the data. This novel application will be compared to traditional point and volume rendering methods in terms of their ability to visualize astrophysical phenomena hypothesized to be present in the data. All of the techniques will be implemented in Java for the Spiegel visualization framework.

MSV'07-Dale-Bischof