Experiments With IDENTIKIT
  IDENTIKIT was originally developed as a fast approximate scheme for modeling
the tidal morphology and kinematics of disk galaxy encounters and mergers. In
this form, it was first used to implement an interactive modeling tool for
galaxy collisions; tests with artificial data showed that the morphology and
kinematics of merging galaxies strongly constrain their initial conditions.
This tool is now being applied to real galaxies. More recently, IDENTIKIT has
been used to develop a mapping from the present state of a tidal encounter back
to the initial conditions; this offers a way to partly automate the search for
dynamical models of galaxy encounters. Finally, IDENTIKIT's theoretical
applications include a comprehensive way to evaluate the mass and extent of
tidal features as functions of halo structure.
