Welcome to the home of the Virtual Cluster Exploratory (VCE).  The goal of VCE is to establish a data access and analysis environment for simulated clusters of galaxies that mirrors the functionality of HEASARC archives and tools.  By enabling coordinated analysis of real and simulated cluster archives, VCE will help accelerate convergence to a complete physical model of the visible and dark matter components of galaxy clusters.
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Supported by Chandra Theory, NASA SAO

 
 

VCE paper on Intracluster Gas Velocity Gradients .

VCE offers libraries of simulations and  processed data products, such as X-ray images and random sky maps, derived from them.

The Dynamic Database allows you to retrieve the overall characteristics, temperature and surface brightness maps of virtual clusters based on your selected range of bulk and X-ray parameters. You can search among sets of simulated cluster "frames" from a library of preheated cluster simulations and select data to download.  A toolkit of IDL routines is under development (beta version planned for Sep 2003) that will allow users to create mock images (of  X-ray emission, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, total mass, etc.) in a controllable fashion (e.g., oriented along the major axis of the gas or dark matter density field). 

The Static Database will allow you to retrieve S-Z and X-ray virtual sky maps. This site is currently under heavy construction. 

Listed under NEWS are proposals by the TEAM along with the results of a user survey conducted in Fall 2002. The HELP link will become active after the initial system release.