Sunburst

A sunburst as photographed from the space shuttle.

The Sun

A sunburst is a design or figure commonly used in architectural ornaments and design patterns. It consists of rays or "beams" radiating out from a central disk in the manner of sunbeams.^[1] Sometimes part of a sunburst, a semicircular or semi-elliptical shape, is used. Traditional sunburst motifs usually show the rays narrowing as they get further from the centre; from the later 19th century they often get wider, as in the Japanese Rising Sun Flag, which is more appropriate in optical terms.

In architecture, the sunburst is often used in window designs, including fanlights and rose windows, as well as in decorative motifs. The sunburst motif is characteristic of Baroque church metalwork, especially monstrances and votive crowns, and Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles as well as church architecture. A sunburst is frequently used in emblems and military decorations.

In information visualization, a sunburst diagram or sunburst chart is a multilevel pie chart used to represent the proportion of different values found at each level in a hierarchy.

Gallery

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  A traditional "solar" monstrance
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  Baroque sunburst crown on a Spanish statue of the Virgin Mary
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  Sunburst chart representing disk usage in a file system
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  War flag of the Imperial Japanese Army (army's version of the Rising Sun Flag)
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  Blue Sky with a White Sun, flag of the Chinese Nationalist Party
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  Terra cotta sunburst art deco design in gold at the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles
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  Bottom of stairs, Burbank City Hall, Burbank, California
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  Chrysler Building top

Footnotes

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2004). "sunburst" (Fourth ed.). Houghton Mifflin Company. Retrieved 2008-01-17.