Trying to outdo themselves even as they complete their huge simulation of a day on the sun, the team is improving on an different, idealized version of the code that runs more efficiently on large numbers of processors. They are using better representations of the real sun instead of the simplified physics and boundary conditions that are used. They're also completing a series of runs that looks at a smaller section of the sun in higher resolution. This high-resolution picture will couple nicely with the current massive-scale run, offering two different views of the same processes.

Computing time is relatively scarce, even after 15 years in the business. But, according to Stein, the scope of the projects gives researchers a lot to work with.

"Because of the size of the computations we do, we can't do that many runs at the same time. But there are always many different ways to look at any of our simulations—many different things to be considered and understood," he says. "The beauty of it is we've only got one sun."

This research is supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation.