Chronosphere

It's scientifically feasible, but nobody was there yet, so you might be as right as I am -- or both of us are not. The sun's surface, in fact, is the sky. One object is the one with the protuberances -- or fog. The other one a lens to make the horizon round. That's what I was after: use the sky and haze to make a foreground "planet" and keep strictly to Bryce. Very minimalistic, really. The lens was the challenge.

Do you get heat haze on the sun? It has an atmosphere and the surface is hot... Not damp atmosphere - hot atmposphere, but you could use a similar technique. You pitcure may be technically correct, I can't say, but to make it more interesting as a piece of artwork I think I'd have made the surface of the sun more bumpy, like a terrain, possibly, like the surface of a pool of lava? Maybe?