An online theoretical virtual observatory for hydrodynamical, cosmological simulations

This article describes a virtual observatory hosting a web portal for accessing and sharing the output of large, cosmological, hydro-dynamical simulations with a broad scientific community. It also allows users to receive related scientific data products by directly processing the raw simulation data on a remote computing cluster. The virtual observatory is a multi-layer structure: a web portal, a job control layer, a computing cluster and a HPC storage system. The outer layer enables users to choose an object from the simulations. Objects can be selected by visually inspecting 2D maps of the simulation data, by performing highly compounded and elaborated queries or graphically from plotting arbitrary combinations of properties. The user can apply several services to a chosen object. These services allow users to run analysis tools on the raw simulation data. The job control layer is responsible for handling and performing the analysis jobs, which are executed on a computing cluster. The inner most layer is formed by a HPC storage system which host the large, raw simulation data. The virtual observatory provides the following services for the users: (I) ClusterInspect visualizes properties of member galaxies of a selected galaxy cluster; (II) SimCut returns the raw data of a sub-volume around a selected object from a simulation, containing all the original, hydro-dynamical quantities; (III) Smac creates idealised 2D maps of various, physical quantities and observable of a selected object; (IV) Phox generates virtual X-ray observations with specifications of various current and upcoming instruments.