One star of one solar mass at solar metallicity, from pre-main-sequence contraction to white-dwarf cooling, computed with MESA r24.08.1, with oscillation modes from GYRE. The run stored 94 interiors, and every panel draws the selected model's own. The track line is the run's full history of 13,024 models.
Panels
timeline
the 94 models in order against fractional radius: convective zones in blue, nuclear burning in orange. Drag to move along the track.
HR diagram
effective temperature against luminosity, with lines of constant radius. Click a model.
interior
a sphere with the eighth facing the viewer cut away, so three flat faces show the interior of the selected model, coloured by its temperature profile. Convective zones show cells sized by the local pressure scale height; radiative zones are smooth, with faint shells drifting outward; burning regions glow in proportion to nuclear energy generation. The surface takes the stored colour for the effective temperature, darkens toward the edge (linear limb darkening after Claret 2000) and carries granulation sized by surface gravity. Cells, granules, shells and the edge glow are illustrative textures; their positions and scales come from the model. A ruler marks the zone boundaries, and a detail circle magnifies the centre when the structure there is too small to see. The surface and interior move with the selected oscillation mode, at an exaggerated amplitude and one period per six seconds; the arrows in the panel header step through the modes.
profiles
six quantities from the model's profile against fractional radius; convective zones shaded blue, burning regions orange.
oscillations
the propagation diagram (Brunt-Väisälä and Lamb frequencies, with the selected mode's cavities shaded), the échelle diagram, the normalised mode inertia, and the mode's radial displacement weighted by r√ρ (the quantity whose square integrates to the mode energy), a JWKB reconstruction on the GYRE equilibrium model rather than GYRE's own eigenfunction. Click a mode in the échelle or inertia panel to select it.
Keys
←→ model, [] mode, space pulsation.
Sources
MESA: Paxton et al. 2011, ApJS 192, 3. GYRE: Townsend and Teitler 2013, MNRAS 435, 3406. The data file (HDF5, 12 MB) is read in the browser from github.com/AndreasWNeitzel/stellar-explorer-data. Eight models, at the helium flash and along the asymptotic giant branch, have no GYRE output in the run.