The video was created using Python, running on my Win 10 laptop; it spans 5 Gyr of actual time. Each disk contains several hundred stars. Colours change at the same (arbitrary) potential energy per unit mass in both disks. Motions in each disk are Keplerian at first. Stars interact only with the massive centres of the two galaxies, shown in white. Fully n-body sims are, ironically, easier to create but rather sluggish - surprise! Stars near the centre of their disk are occasionally ejected, due I think to the size of the time step, and perhaps also to the softening length added to the Law of Gravitation.
For the future: Include DM halos? Explore more parameter space? Try to reproduce a few of Halton Arp's menagerie?
Despite largely achieving my goal I consider myself anything but a Python expert. One unsolved problem: I can use the touchpad to change the viewing angle while the sim is running - a cool feature of Python 3D animations! Annoyingly, though, I cannot (yet) preserve those changes in the saved video file. Growl...
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