The Starlab Environment for Dense Stellar Systems
Abstract
Traditionally, a simulation of a dense stellar system required choosing an initial model, running an integrator, and analyzing the output. Almost all of the effort went into writing a clever integrator that could handle binaries, triples and encounters between various multiple systems efficiently. Recently, the scope and complexity of these simulations has increased dramatically, for three reasons: 1) the sheer size of the data sets, measured in Terabytes, make traditional `awking and grepping' of a single output file impractical; 2) the addition of stellar evolution data brings qualitatively new challenges to the data reduction; 3) increased realism of the simulations invites realistic forms of `SOS': Simulations of Observations of Simulations, to be compared directly with observations. We are now witnessing a shift toward the construction of archives as well as tailored forms of visualization including the use of virtual reality simulators and planetarium domes, and a coupling of both with budding efforts in constructing virtual observatories. This review describes these new trends, presenting Starlab as the first example of a full software environment for realistic large-scale simulations of dense stellar systems.
- Publication:
-
Astrophysical Supercomputing using Particle Simulations
- Pub Date:
- 2003
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/0204431
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0204431
- Bibcode:
- 2003IAUS..208..331H
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 12 pages, 1 figure, to appear in "Astrophysical Supercomputing Using Particle Simulations", eds. P. Hut and J. Makino, IAU Symposium 208, Tokyo, July 2001