Solar Superstorms

A fury is building on the surface of the sun – high-velocity jets, a fiery tsunami wave that reaches 100,000 kilometers high, rising loops of electrified gas. What’s driving these strange phenomena? How will they affect planet Earth?

Explore the answers by venturing into the seething interior of our star. Solar Superstorms is an ultra-high resolution fulldome show that takes viewers into the tangle of magnetic fields and superhot plasma, as the sun vents its rage in dramatic flares, violent solar tornadoes, and the largest eruptions in the solar system, known as coronal mass ejections.
 
The show features one of the most intensive efforts ever made to visualize the inner workings of the sun. That includes a series of groundbreaking scientific visualizations that have been computed on the giant new supercomputing initiative, Blue Waters, based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois.

Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, "Solar Superstorms" is a co-production of
NCSA's Advanced Visualization Lab, Thomas Lucas Productions, and Spitz Creative Media.

Solar Superstorms is prominently featured in the spring/summer issue of Access magazine, and the story is available on the NCSA website: Computational Science and Data Visualization Take the Spotlight in New Solar Superstorms Documentary

Visualization Excerpts:

Funded in part by: National Science Foundation Award: ACI-1445176