With baited breath the team watched as the light sculpture was finally switched on at BioCity – we weren’t disappointed, it looked stunning! The Corona, conceived by renowned local artist and sculptor Wolfgang Buttress, consists of a series of anodised aluminium rods and fibre optic lights, suspended on the façade of the new biosciences building, which change colour and intensity to reflect real time changes in sun flare activity. The display is linked to live feeds from NASA satellites monitoring the surface of the sun.

Matt Greenhalgh, the project architect says ‘The sculpture has science at its heart and directly responds to the intensity and location of solar flares emanating from the surface of the sun which will manifest through the ebb, flow and intensity of the illumination’.