Stellar Explorer

The track is a solar-metallicity, 1 solar-mass run from pre-main-sequence contraction to white-dwarf cooling. On first load the app fetches the track, an HDF5 file of about 12 MB, from a companion repository and decodes it in the browser. It needs no server or installation and uploads nothing.

Open Stellar Explorer (about 12 MB)

What it shows

• A timeline of the 94 stored models against fractional radius, with convective zones and nuclear burning regions, which doubles as the control for moving along the track.
• The HR diagram drawn from every row of the run, with the stored models coloured by phase and lines of constant radius.
• A cut through the star at the selected model, coloured by temperature, with convective cells, radiative zones and burning regions from that model's own profile; a ruler marks the zone boundaries, and a detail circle magnifies the centre of giants, where the burning shell sits within a hundredth of the radius. The shells move with the selected oscillation mode.
• Six profiles against radius: temperature, density, pressure, nuclear energy generation, opacity, and the hydrogen and helium fractions.
• The propagation diagram (Brunt-Väisälä and Lamb frequencies with the selected mode's cavities), the échelle diagram, the mode inertias and the mode's radial displacement. Frequencies, degrees, radial orders and inertias come from GYRE; the displacement is a JWKB reconstruction on the GYRE equilibrium structure. Eight models, at the helium flash and along the asymptotic giant branch, have no GYRE output in the run, and the panels say so.