VISUALIZATION

High-resolution scientific visualizations created at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) will artfully illustrate the latest black hole research in the PBS NOVA special "Monster of the Milky Way," which debuts Oct. 31. Shown are the the explosive ramifications of a typical galaxy merger. The show describes the latest scientific research indicating that a supermassive black hole lurks in the center of our galaxy and explores recent revelations about how supermassive black holes get so large and how their violent growth influences their surrounding galaxies. NCSA's renowned visualization team, led by Donna Cox, animated black hole data from astronomers at Harvard, Princeton, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California Los Angeles, University of California San Diego, and University of Virginia. Several of the astronomy research teams used supercomputers at NCSA and other sites to produce detailed simulations that required weeks of computing time on even these superfast systems and yielded hundreds of gigabytes of data. Cox's team then worked with this flood of data, determining how to represent the science accurately and artfully. Members of the NCSA visualization team collaborating on this project include Cox, Robert Patterson, Lorne Leonard, Dave Bock, and Stuart Levy. The NCSA team also created visualizations of black hole science for a planetarium dome show, "Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity," that debuted at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in February and is now touring. NCSA's work on the "Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity" and "Monster of the Milky Way" was supported by grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant No. ESI-0337286). For more information on "Monster of the Milky Way," go to its Web site. Cox's team has previously produced high-resolution animations for productions such as the Academy Award-nominated IMAX film "Cosmic Voyage," NOVA's acclaimed HDTV cosmology program "Runaway Universe," and the HDTV NOVA special "Hunt for the Supertwister." The group produced visualizations for the space show "The Search for Life: Are We Alone?" for the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, as well as the planetarium's inaugural dome presentation, "Passport to the Universe."