H2 Sigma* Antibonding Orbital Formation

Shows the formation of an (unoccupied) sigma* antibonding orbital from 1s orbitals on H atoms, as the H atoms approach each other from a distance of 4.0 A. Orbital shapes produced by GAUSSIAN 09 rev D.01 in increments of 0.2 A, starting from 4.0 A through 0.8 A and ending at the optimized H-H distance, at the UB3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) level. The NBO analysis program (https://nbo6.chem.wisc.edu/) included in this version of GAUSSIAN was used to compute the natural bond orbitals, which were saved and converted to a cube file. This file (one for each frame) was rendered in VMD with an isovalue of +/-0.04. The output .obsj and .mtl were stitched together using Sketchfab's experimental stop-motion animator, with opacities on orbitals set to 0.5.