I've made this image by putting an oblate shell on the outside of the
star, with a thick atmosphere
(see this page-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulus
The star is oblate (not rugby-ball shaped, as some news items
maintained a few years ago)
The star exhibits gravity darkening because the poles have a higher
gravity, so fusion runs hotter under the poles; the surface is much
closer to the fusing core at the poles than at the equator.
I got this effect by darkening the texture at the equator, by the way.
I am sure there is a way of replacing the star with a model rather than simply covering it with a luminous shell; any ideas?
I have an ambition to make a model of a B emitter class star next,
like Dschubba
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/dschubba.html
these very rapidly spinning stars have a disk around the equator which
emits radiation; by merging a star and a black-hole accretion disk I
think I could make a reasonable model of such a beast.
Incidentally here is an old image of a shell I put round the outside of Betelgeuse a while ago; not entirely successful, but it looks good from a distance-
Betelgeuse apparently is very irregular in form, although extraordinarily big.
)
None-the-less very interesting!