Astrophysical simulators converged on the FLASH Center in Chicago for the first yt workshop, held from January 24 – 26.
yt, or "yours truly" is a data visualization software for large-scale simulations, first developed by Columbia postdoctoral fellow Mathew Turk. yt emphasizes usability, divorcing low-level file i/o and common reduction techniques from high level goals the user has in mind. The result is an elegant, object-oriented, versatile software suite, designed to handle large output files from many prominent astrophysical simulation codes, like enzo and FLASH.
What Turk began as a simple "slice-making" add-on for the astro simulation code enzo has now grown into an open source, collaborative-development driven software. This conference sought to enhance this trend, covering not only yt usage from basic to advance but also techniques for modifying and extending the software.
In total, 50 registrants attended the conference, from undergrads to professors. Seven participants held talks and demonstrations, transitioning a number of scientists from yt virgins to advanced users of the software. According to Turk, the 2012 yt conference "enabled lots of collaboration and discussion about data analysis."
Video tutorials from the conference are available on youtube.
Copyright 2011 Columbia University
