Hamish McNeilly/FairfaxNZ

Visual artist Trudy Lane is silhouetted agains the sun as part of a display in a vacant Dunedin store.

A large sun display is warming Dunedin this winter. 

Live images of the sun, captured by solar telescopes from the city, are being projected on a wall of a vacant Princes St shop as part of the "Sunroom" project, created by digital artist Trudy Lane.

When sun was not readily available above Dunedin, a looped video from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory was displayed.

Other times a live feed from Dresden, Germany was used.

From a young age children were told not to look at the sun, but the project allowed people to do just that and "get to know it".

The project was for Urban Dream Brokerage Project, which transforms vacant city retail space, and was funded by a GigCity community grant from chorus.

The sun was the primary source of energy for our planet and "I find that quite fascinating", Lane said.

"All that sun energy that fed that Jurassic forest – that became oil that we now use on the buses."

 - Stuff