Volume visualisation of the Orion Nebula

C.R. O'Dell and Zheng Wen of Rice University derived a 3D model of the nebula from infrared and visible light observations from Hubble and ground-based imagery. Using computer graphics techniques and imagery a fly-though of the nebua was created.

A 2 1/2 minute fly-through animation of the nebula requiring about 31,000 high-resolution images, was produced for the opening of the Rose center (Hayden Planetarium) on December 31, 1999. The planetarium uses seven 1280x1024 video projectors to seamlessly cover the interior of the dome.
The animation frames were rendered using the 1000+ processors IBM RS/6000 teraflops supercomputer on the IBM factory floor. Running one multi-threaded renderer on each 8-processor node, the frames were computed during a single 12-hour period.

More information on the project here (NPACI Online News Volume IV Issue 4 - February 23, 2000).

Publications

B. Pailthorpe, N. Bordes Scalable volume visualization, ranging from astrophysics through brain mapping, to oceanography, in Simulation and visualization on the Grid; B. Ernquist, L. Johnsson, M. Hammill & F. Dhort (Eds); Lecture Notes in Computational Science, p122-134 (Springer Verlag. 2000).

D. Nadeau, J. Genetti, S. Napear, B. Pailthorpe, C. Emmart, E. Wesselak, and D. Davidson, "Visualizing Stars and Emission Nebulae," Computer Graphics Forum, Vol 20(1), March 2001, pp. 27-33.

D. Nadeau, J. Genetti, S. Napear, B. Pailthorpe, C. Emmart, E. Wesselak, and D. Davidson, "Visualizing Stars and Emission Nebulae," Eurographics 2000 Short Presentation.

Credits:

J. Genetti, G. Johnson, D. Nadeau, S. Napear, B. Pailthorpe, H. Ammons, J. Meyer, N. Bordes

San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego

C. Emmart, E. Wesselak, D. Davidson

Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, New York

C. R. O'Dell, Z. Wen

Rice University

1999-2000