FieldVis: A tool for visualizing astrophysical magnetohydrodynamic flow

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, and their properties have been suggested to hold essential clues to the history of the universe's formation. Hot gas fills these clusters (in accumulation being more massive than the galaxies themselves), and astronomers use the gas's thermodynamic properties to analyze the clusters' histories. The enormous power of the fast, collimated jets of ionized matter, or plasma, formed near massive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies seriously complicates this analysis. What is not theoretically resolved is precisely how and where the jets do their work, and just how efficiently they do it. To accomplish the complex visualization of these jets, the authors developed FieldVis, a simulation tool that focuses primarily on representing 3D vector and scalar fields. Examining data from a sample 3D magnetohydrodynamic fluid simulation graphically illustrates the usefulness of their visualization package.