We ran a series of 2D simulations of a planar radiative shock at successively higher spatial resolution. The images shown here come from the highest resolution run with 2000x2000 zones. The simulations are initialized with a high-pressure, low-density region driving a planar shock into a uniform medium. The planar symmetry is broken by placing an extended region of slightly over-dense (5%) gas in the preshock medium. The two images below come from different times in the same simulation. The color depicts the logarithm of the gas density, with red the highest and blue the lowest, with flow moving to the right. The shock front is the discontinuity on the right-hand side separating the green from the light blue. Note that neither the shock front, nor the shock 'back', where the cooling gas compresses to high density, remains planar.

Click on the image to download a full resolution image in tiff format.

Here is a quicktime movie from a section of the 1000x1000 simulation: QT (23MB)