Benjamin Oppenheimer's CASA Research Website

Cosmological Hydrodynamic Simulations

Simulating 13 Billion Years of the Cosmos
Welcome to my research website. Here you can find a description of my research and outreach efforts, including some recently generated visualizations for the Fiske Planetarium (check back November 2018 for the final product). Students can also find lecture notes for classes and schools I have taught. I also list my CV and publications below. Welcome!

My Research

I study how galaxies form and evolve using the tools of cosmologically-based hydrodynamic simulations. My work encompasses galaxies and their gas from the present-day Universe to the Epoch of Reionization. I am specifically interested in motivating new observing methods, campaigns, and telescopes to ascertain how gas flows form the variety of galaxy types and morphologies we observe.

A simulation I ran years ago. Much
progress has been made since then.

Cosmological Hydrodynamic Simulations

The gaseous fuel for the formation of a
galaxy. (Courtesy Swinburne Graphics
Design Team)

The Circumgalactic Medium

My team and I are producing an LSST
EPO planetarium video. (see below)

Visualizations for Planetariums

Active galactic nuclei flicker and
ionize their CGM

Flickering Active Galactic Nuclei

I work mainly with Hubble data and
am funded by HST grants. (courtesy Goddard
Space Flight Center)

The Hubble Space Telescope

The
Lynx Telescope Concept is the future of
X-ray astronomy, and I predict what it
will observe.

The Lynx X-ray Telescope

I am a part of a team that received funding to develop planetarium show clips for the LSST Eductation and Public Outreach Office. I ran the simulation in the movie below. My student Suphawit "Stang" Duangphumek made this movie. Adrien Thob (LJMU) is producing the high-resolution dome projection. And Thor Metzinger (Fiske Planetarium) is going to lead the production of the final visualization in November. We have a great team!

Mock-up video of a
Milky Way-like halo
evolving from the Big Bang
until today.

Click here for a low-resolution mock-up video I am helping produce for the LSST EPO show.

Adrien Thob made this excellent visualization of our simulated Milky Way-like galaxy (9/18/18). It's 200 MB! We're going to make a final video in about two months.

I run a small group at CU Boulder. Included is my PhD student, Ryan Horton. I also have four undergraduates: Conor Evans, Suphawit (Stang) Duangphumek (not pictured), Ezra Huscher, and Austin Micho, plus a "post-doc" from another field (Physical Chemistry) trying out a new field.

Benjamin D. Oppenheimer

Cosmological Hydrodynamic Simulations

My Research

Visualization

My Group

My lectures for various classes and schools I teach can be found here.

Lectures for Challenges in Modern Cosmology: Dark Matter and Dark Energy (International Institution of Physics) (Natal, Brazil, May 2014)

Lecture 1 for Cosmological Simulation Undergraduates (Spring 2018)

Background courtesy Swinburne University Graphics Design Team.

My CV

(as of Sept. 2018)

My Publications

(as of Sept. 2018)