I think people have noticed that emitters and - more prominently - progenitors (those huge pink things with the blue star in the middle) produce a glow that affects ships. It enables a few extra neat 3D illusions on top of the general light source coming from the top left. Is there any way to get a PRPL core to glow like they do?
Not really, though you can create an Emitter underneath it that doesn't produce anything.
It was more for the sake of creating a ship module that glows. It's no big deal, though.