Dr. Wolfgang Steffen
Instituto de Astronomía,OAN, UNAM
Ensenada, México,
wsteffen@astrosen.unam.mx
| Publications |
| Shape |
| Cosmovisión |
| Outreach (Spanish) |
| YouTube |
| CV |
| Español |
Quark Nova Feature Animation with Sound- This animation shows how a massive star ends its life through a supernova followed by a quark nova explosion. It also demonstrates the reheating of the supernova remnant via a dual shock quark nova giving rise to a superluminous supernova (Animation: W. Steffen,Cosmovision). It illustrates the results of the paper by Ouyed et al., 2012, Quark nova imprint in the extreme supernova explosion SN 2006gy (MNRAS, in press). See also the Quark Nova Project at the University of Calgary.
I work mainly on the interface between theoretical studies of hydrodynamic flows and their observations, developing effective ways to directly compare observations of particular objects with complex theoretical models. During my early career I developed models for the kinematics and brightness variations in relativistic helical radio jets and the hydrodynamic interaction of radio jets with the interstellar medium in Seyfert galaxies.
More recently my work has been mainly on the hydrodynamics and kinematics of circumstellar nebulae, applying hydrodynamic simulations and 3D morpho-kinematic modeling. The development and application of the interactive 3D morpho-kinematic modeling code Shape together with Nico Koning is currently the main focus of research. Circumstellar environments, including quark novae, are a prime target for the application of Shape. I recently developed a new kinematic mapping technique called "criss-cross" mapping that is a direct spin-off from the modeling of planetary nebulae with Shape.
The development of Shape is based on my experience with the 3D visualization of astrophysical phenomena using computer graphics tools like 3DStudio Max. Using 3DStudio Max I now and then produce videos and computer animations of astronomical topics for educational purposes.