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SpheRayDemo is a "spherical raytrace demonstration" of modeling raytraced ion acoustic waves propagating in the Sun. See my webpage on helioseismology for more. Bonus: this app's plots look like Spirograph art!

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SpheRayDemo, 2005-2015
Andy Ganse, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington
aganse@apl.washington.edu


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SpheRayDemo is a "spherical raytrace demonstration", an interactive, graphical, helioseismic raytrace applet. Helioseismic means seismology of the Sun - ion-acoustic waves actually propagate inside the Sun just like sound and earthquake waves propagate in the Earth; they pass through different internal layers before refracting back up to the surface where they cause brightness fluctuations that can be measured. So just like Earth seismology provides a tool for measuring structure inside the Earth, helioseismology provides a tool for measuring structure inside the Sun. Cool huh?

SpheRayDemo demonstrates how these ion-acoustic waves refract and reflect inside the Sun. (I.e. the velocity profile examples and the plot scales are geared for the Sun case - but a similar app could similarly represent earthquake waves propagating in the globe of the Earth.)

You can download and compile the source, or just download and use the application jarfile, spheraydemo.jar. Run it at commandline via:

> java -jar spheraydemo.jar

The class is designed to be run as either an independent application or as a webapge applet. Please see my webpages on this app (and for an intro to the topic of helioseismology) for more information:

The small SpheRayDemo.html file (or the page source of the applet webpage above for that matter) demonstrates calling the code as an applet. (Alas this code is poorly commented, sorry... on the to-do list.)

See screenshot1.png or the webapges above for what the app looks like. Quick running instructions: after starting the application via above, right-click on the WaveVel vs Depth plot (left) and choose say "B-P 2000 Model" velocity profile from menu (you can also click in your own points, either from scratch or adding to the chosen menu profile). Then click the swirly-arrows button in toolbar to run the raytrace and see the raypaths on the right.

Note too the "edit" button at top left - artistically speaking, the greater the "max iterations" value the closer the result looks to a Spirograph picture! See e.g. screenshot2.png.

looks like Spirograph!

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SpheRayDemo is a "spherical raytrace demonstration" of modeling raytraced ion acoustic waves propagating in the Sun. See my webpage on helioseismology for more. Bonus: this app's plots look like Spirograph art!

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