Скачать или смотреть Apples-to-apples comparison of simulated and observed galaxies

Maarten Baes (University of Ghent, Belgium)
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations have become indispensable tools in our efforts to understand galaxy formation and evolution. To assess their realism, direct comparison with observed galaxy populations is essential. A forward-modelling approach, in which simulated galaxies are translated into the observational domain, provides a powerful pathway toward such comparisons. A crucial aspect of this translation is the role of interstellar dust: up to half of the stellar light in the Universe is absorbed by dust and re-emitted in the infrared, requiring detailed three-dimensional dust radiative transfer calculations. The Monte Carlo radiative transfer code SKIRT has emerged as a widely used tool for generating synthetic spectral energy distributions and multi-wavelength images of simulated galaxies, enabling robust, apples-to-apples comparisons with observations. In this talk, I will present results from SKIRT post-processing of galaxies extracted from the EAGLE, IllustrisTNG, and Auriga simulations, highlight ongoing applications to the new COLIBRE simulations, and discuss future prospects for dust-aware synthetic observations as a stringent test of cosmological galaxy formation models.