Galactic Bridges and Tails
Computer animation film
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Galactic Bridges and Tails is a computer animation film created in 1972 by astrophysicists Alar Toomre and Juri Toomre. The brothers created the film as a teaching aid to accompany their 1972 landmark research paper of the same name, published in The Astrophysical Journal, which described galaxy collisions and galaxy mergers.[1]
Technology of the original animated film
The Toomre film contains both 2D and 3D computer graphics simulations of colliding galaxies. The animations are time-lapses that compress billions of years into just a few minutes. Written in the FORTRAN programming language, the simulations sent character and vector information to a CRT-based ASCII character film recorder. The film recorder exposed multiple frames of 16mm film to create the final animated film.[2]
Digital film restoration
In 2007, filmmaker Michael Lauter worked with the Toomre brothers to digitally restore the 16mm original film and create a new HD video (1080p24) digital master.[2]