Resources
Below are some images and movies I've created from my research, all made with yt and matplotlib. Some are more art than science, but feel free to use them as you like with a credit to me and the publication listed.
Assembling the Cosmic Web
Reference: Smith et al. (2011). Download [130 MB]
This movie illustrates how large-scale structure forms via gravitational collapse from an initially smooth density field to a complex web of halos and filaments. The colors show the density of the gas with respect to the average density on a log scale. First, the simulation evolves forward from just after the big bang until the present day, roughly 13.7 billion years later. Then, we show only the gas in very thin slices in density, moving from the underdense regions now appearing as voids, to smaller and then larger filaments, and finally to the spherical halos at the intersections of filaments.
High Resolution Cosmic Webs
Above are volume renders from an Enzo simulation with 3 billion grid cells and dark matter particles. The image shows a region 50 Mpc (about 163 million light years) on a side and a depth of 10 Mpc. From left to right, the images show gas density, temperature, and metallicity. Click on the link below each image for a 2048x2048 high resolution version.