The student will be involved in using synthetic clusters produced by state-of-the-art Hydrodynamical N-Body simulations. The student will write software to produce virtual observations of these simulated clusters using the information contained in the hydrodynamic simulations. These mock images can be directly compared with real observations, from X-ray maps of the hot gas that envelops clusters to images of individual galaxies themselves. By examining the properties of the clusters we will be able to identify signatures of galaxy cluster mergers and the dynamical state present in the mock images.
