Teaching: Spherical harmonics

Spherical harmonics visualizations

• 3-D visualizations

  Inspired by Allen McNamara's nifty movies, I couldn't help but use the new python
  scripting facility in Paraview and make my own. Shown are a few real spherical harmonics
  with alm = 1, blm = 0, warped with the scalar amplitude that is colored from red to blue.
  Gray translucent sphere indicates the zero, spheroid shape.
  Click on each image to bring up an animation.
  

• Simple movie

  

  Clicking on the image above will download a 2.5MB MPEG movie that does
  nothing but show the pattern of all spherical harmonics up to degree (l) and order (m) 31.
  If you have some sort of movieplayer that lets you select individual frames,
  it can be useful in visualizing the individual harmonics.