Fall 2002 -- Vol. 20, No. 1

Penn State Astronomer's Images of the First Stars Featured on Discovery Channel

On June 3, millions of people got their first glimpse of stunning images computed by Tom Abel, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, and other scientists, when the Discovery Channel premiered a new science documentary called "The Unfolding Universe." The show followed teams of astronomers and scientists as they searched for clues to the origins and evolution of our Milky Way galaxy. The Discovery Channel is distributed in 86.3-million households in the United States.

The first galaxies form hierarchically. Small object form at the intersection of filaments and merge into larger and larger objects. When these pre-galactic objects become as heavy as a million times the mass of our sun one massive star forms within them. (copyright: "From the Unfolding Universe," the Discovery Channel)

Three simulations done by Abel illustrate how the universe's first cosmological objects formed, how the first stars within them were born, and how they eventually died. "If you want to understand how the first galaxies formed, you have to learn how the first stars formed, to understand the atomic and molecular physics of the primordial gas from which they formed, to investigate how these stars evolved and died, and to learn how they influenced their surroundings," says Abel, who joined the Penn State faculty in January 2002.

Abel says he also has been asked to provide his visualizations for a number of popular science magazines, including Astronomy Magazine, the New York Times Science section, National Geographic, Science, and Science News. "The story about our research on the first stars also has been presented in Brazilian, South-African, Hungarian, Dutch, Spanish, British, and German newspapers and on on-line journals, and also on a 30-minute British Broadcasting Corporation radio program aired during May," he adds.

Zooming in onto to the first proto-star. Once one zooms in far enough the proto-star (white colors) can be seen with its proto-stellar disk (blueish colors)around it. (copyright: "From the Unfolding Universe," the Discovery Channel)

Abel's collaborators on the simulations include Greg Bryan, of the University of Oxford in England, and Michael Norman, of the University of California at San Diego. "We are happy that the many years of research and new insights on the nature of the first stars can be illustrated now in a comprehensible way to the general public and experts alike," Abel comments.

Simulations in the Discovery Channel program by other scientists include two colliding black holes, the evolution of the early universe and its interacting galaxies, the interaction of hydrogen and helium in the early universe forming protogalaxies, the complex and turbulent flow of matter within a dying star, and an animated flight from Earth into the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

In addition, the program includes visualizations produced from astronomical data collected through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a large international effort that aims to observe 100,000 quasars, to measure the distances to a million galaxies, and to produce a comprehensive digital map of the sky. Donald Schneider, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and chair of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Science Group, remarks, "The 'Unfolding Universe' program makes recent research about one of the most fundamental questions we face, the kindling of the first light in the universe, readily accessible to the general public. The computer simulations of the formation of the first structures are visually stunning."

The scientists whose computations are the basis of the program are affiliated with the National Science Foundation's National Computational Science Alliance. Their computed images were turned into visually dramatic animations by visualization artists and programmers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is a partner in the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project and the leader of the National Science Foundation's National Computational Science Alliance. "The Unfolding Universe" was produced and directed by Thomas Lucas, of Thomas Lucas Productions, Inc., and co-produced by Donna Cox and Robert Patterson, of NCSA.

Barbara K. Kennedy

 

Zooming in onto to the first proto-star. Once one zooms in far enough the proto-star (white colors) can be seen with its proto-stellar disk (blueish colors)around it. (copyright: "From the Unfolding Universe," the Discovery Channel)

All images copyright: "From the Unfolding Universe", the Discovery Channel. Visualizations by Ralf Kahler (ZIB), Donna Cox, Bob Patterson, and Stuart Levy (NCSA) from numerical simulations by Tom Abel (PSU), Greg Bryan (Oxford) and Michael Norman (UCSD).

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