The Sun

About this page

Above is a GPU-accelerated, real-time visualization of the Sun, our G-type main-sequence star. The model emphasizes photospheric granulation, limb darkening, and a stylized hint of magnetic activity such as sunspots and faculae. It’s designed for clarity and performance rather than physical fluid simulation.

What you’re seeing

The mottled texture evokes granulation: convection cells where hot plasma rises, cools, and sinks. Darker spots represent sunspots—regions of concentrated magnetic fields that appear cooler than their surroundings—while subtle bright rims suggest faculae. The disc edge appears dimmer due to limb darkening, modeled in the shader to approximate how light escapes from different depths in the photosphere.

The Sun exhibits differential rotation: roughly ~25 days at the equator and ~35 days near the poles. This visualization hints at that with latitude-dependent scrolling of the texture; it is a visual approximation, not a helioseismology-accurate model. A gentle additive glow stands in for the low-contrast chromosphere/corona for context.

Observing the Sun (Safety!)

Never look at the Sun directly or through optical instruments without a certified solar filter. With proper filters, you can see sunspots in white light. In H-alpha, narrowband filters reveal prominences and filaments along the limb. Solar activity varies over an ~11-year cycle, so the number and size of visible spots changes over time.

Tech notes

The simulation runs in WebGL2 by default with ACES tone mapping and sRGB output. A multi-layer shader blends animated noise for granulation, a parametric limb-darkening curve, and optional spot masks with soft falloff. Latitude-weighted UV distortion suggests differential rotation. A back-faced sphere provides a faint starfield vignette (minimal for contrast). On compatible systems, enabling WebGPU can improve precision and frame pacing. This is a real-time educational rendering, not an MHD/CFD model.