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Baby It’s Cold Front Outside
Bundle up – we’re taking a look at some cool simulations of cluster cold fronts.
Looking on the bright side: gamma-ray predictions from supernova dark matter
When we cannot measure particles directly, we have to look for their radiation byproducts. Today’s authors investigate the possibility of detecting dark matter being converted into gamma rays by the the most famous supernova’s remnant.
Big Black Holes in Little Galaxies
Active galactic nuclei are commonly observed in large galaxies, but what about small galaxies? Today’s paper explores the effects of the universe’s largest and loudest black holes in the universe’s smallest galaxies.
Galactic Whodunit: The Case of the Quenched Star Formation
Who is responsible for the death of star formation in galaxies?
Baby Galaxies Love to Take 100 Million Year Naps
Today’s paper investigates the star-forming histories of early galaxies and finds that galaxies form their stars in bursts, interspersed with lulls.
Collapsing haloes and expanding voids: can modelling them help us understand the dynamics of our Universe?
In today’s bite, we look at a new approach to modelling the expansion rate of the Universe, in a way that takes into account how growing structures like voids or haloes in the Universe impact this.
Beyond astro-ph
Astronomy beyond the research
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Navigating careers in astronomy
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Installing and Running Gadget-2
This is the first of two posts detailing how to install and operate the Gadget-2 hydrodynamics code. Click here for the second post in the series. Today’s astrobite will be another in a series on career advice and useful astronomical tools. So far, it looks like there’s been a dearth of posts on the tools of theoretical astrophysics, so I thought I’d take the opporunity to show how easy it is to run a simulation using Gadget-2, a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (or SPH) code. Gadget-2 is open source and publically available, so anyone can run simulations with it. In a future post, I’ll discuss how to set up and run a simple hydrodynamics test problem. The instructions for installing Gadget-2 will be highly platform dependent. If you’re running Linux or UNIX, you have all of the tools you will need to compile the codes already. If you’re on a Mac, you’ll need to install and update Xcode, which includes all of the compilers you will need. On Windows, you’ll probably need to install cygwin which will give your Windows installation full UNIX support. Since I have a Mac, I’m going to focus on getting these codes working on OS X Snow Leopard. If you have a different system, it might not be possible to follow my instructions exactly. I’ll be doing all of the simulations for this series of posts on my laptop, a Macbook Pro. First, you will need to download a few software packages. Gadget 2.0.7. Version 1.9 of the GNU scientific library (GSL). Version 2.1.5 of the FFTW fast Fourier transform library. A Message Passing Interface…
Everything I need to know about observing I did not learn in kindergarten
Last week I spent two nights observing on Magellan, in Chile. It was my first observing trip and there was a lot more to it than expected!
Visiting a Grad School? Check out our tips!
Visiting grad schools can be intimidating, but we are here to tell you not to worry! The visits are fun, packed with meetings, and a great way to see what the department is really like.
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