Visualizations of Scientific Data
Periodic Table: The Composition of the Sun I.
Visualizing the chemical composition of the Sun's photosphere, which is possible to measure mainly through spectroscopy, is difficult, because it is mostly made of hydrogen (73.7%) and helium (24.9%) by mass, 92% and 7.8% by the number of atoms respectively.
Here, instead of showing it in a logarithm scale, I chose to scale the volume of each sphere according to the number of atoms of each element relative to the total number of atoms. This way it is still possible to show the least abundant elements compared to hydrogen.
The number of atoms of each element in the Sun's photosphere is printed in the bottom right corner in parts per billion.
Source: Asplund et al. 2009
Periodic Table: The Composition of the Sun I.
Visualizing the chemical composition of the Sun's photosphere, which is possible to measure mainly through spectroscopy, is difficult, because it is mostly made of hydrogen (73.7%) and helium (24.9%) by mass, 92% and 7.8% by the number of atoms respectively.
Here, instead of showing it in a logarithm scale, I chose to scale the volume of each sphere according to the number of atoms of each element relative to the total number of atoms. This way it is still possible to show the least abundant elements compared to hydrogen.
The number of atoms of each element in the Sun's photosphere is printed in the bottom right corner in parts per billion.
Source: Asplund et al. 2009