Galactic Bridges and Tails is a computer animation film created by astrophysicists Alar Toomre and Juri Toomre. The brothers created the film as a teaching aid for their landmark research paper of the same name, published in The Astrophysical Journal, detailing the collision of galaxies or galaxy mergers.[Ref 1]
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The Toomre film contains both 2D and 3D computer graphics simulations with time-lapse of colliding galaxies. The animation compresses millions of years into a couple minutes.[Ref 2]
The Brothers Toomre programmed the animation with FORTRAN code, which sent character and vector info to a CRT-based ASCII character film recorder. The film recorder exposed multiple frames of 16mm film, creating the computer animation.[Ref 2]
In 2007, filmmaker Michael Lauter worked with the Brothers Toomre to digitally restore the 16mm original film and create a new HD video (1080p24) master.[Ref 2]
Massachusetts-based MathWorks, has created a Simulink model titled Spiral Galaxy Formation Simulation for use within their MATLAB programming environment. The company claims their computer animation model was inspired by the original Galactic Bridges and Tails paper and film.[Ref 3]