The IllustrisTNG simulations: public data release

TLDR

IllustrisTNG is a suite of large‑volume cosmological simulations using the moving‑mesh code Arepo that self‑consistently model dark matter, gas, stars, and black holes from early times to \(z=0\). We present the full public release of all data from the TNG100 and TNG300 simulations of the IllustrisTNG project. The release includes halo/subhalo catalogs, merger trees, and 100 snapshots for TNG50, TNG100, and TNG300, with data access via IDL, Python, Matlab, a web API, and a JupyterLab interface for on‑demand visualization and analysis. The release offers ~750 TB of data now available online, expanding to ~1.1 PB with TNG50, and includes scientific cautions, caveats, and a browser‑based platform that enables near‑native analysis without downloading large datasets.

Abstract

Abstract We present the full public release of all data from the TNG100 and TNG300 simulations of the IllustrisTNG project. IllustrisTNG is a suite of large volume, cosmological, gravo-magnetohydrodynamical simulations run with the moving-mesh code Arepo . TNG includes a comprehensive model for galaxy formation physics, and each TNG simulation self-consistently solves for the coupled evolution of dark matter, cosmic gas, luminous stars, and supermassive black holes from early time to the present day, $z=0$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:math> . Each of the flagship runs—TNG50, TNG100, and TNG300—are accompanied by halo/subhalo catalogs, merger trees, lower-resolution and dark-matter only counterparts, all available with 100 snapshots. We discuss scientific and numerical cautions and caveats relevant when using TNG. The data volume now directly accessible online is ∼750 TB, including 1200 full volume snapshots and ∼80,000 high time-resolution subbox snapshots. This will increase to ∼1.1 PB with the future release of TNG50. Data access and analysis examples are available in IDL, Python, and Matlab. We describe improvements and new functionality in the web-based API, including on-demand visualization and analysis of galaxies and halos, exploratory plotting of scaling relations and other relationships between galactic and halo properties, and a new JupyterLab interface. This provides an online, browser-based, near-native data analysis platform enabling user computation with local access to TNG data, alleviating the need to download large datasets.