Visualizing Outbursts of Massive Stars

Authors: Joseph A. Insley (Argonne National Laboratory, Northern Illinois University), Yan-Fei Jiang (University of California, Santa Barbara), Matteo Cantiello (Flatiron Institute), Lars Bildsten (University of California, Santa Barbara), Eliot Quataert (University of California, Berkeley), Omer Blaes (University of California, Santa Barbara), James Stone (Princeton University)

Abstract: Massive stars play an important role in many astrophysical environments such as star formation and the structure of the interstellar medium in galaxies. However, the structures and mass loss of massive stars, which are crucial to understand the evolution and fate of massive stars, are still mysteries. Global radiation hydrodynamic simulations of an 80 solar mass star envelope were performed on the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility’s supercomputer, Mira, to find the answers. In this work, we present visualizations of the data produced in these simulations, which show the important role that helium opacity plays in outbursts from massive stars.

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