Just how big is the Sun in comparison to other stars? This video shows the scales of known stars in our Milky Way galaxy and shows you just how big, or small, the Sun really is. This short video was taken from the planetarium show, The Sun — Our Living Star. More information and download options: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/scales_stars/ Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

This is the original landscape-format version of the short movie Cosmic Eye, designed by astrophysicist Danail Obreschkow. The movie zooms through all well-known scales of the universe from minuscule elementary particles out to the gigantic cosmic web. This project was inspired by a progression of increasingly accurate graphical representations of the scales of the universe, including the classical essay "Cosmic View" by Kees Boeke (1957), the short movie "Cosmic Zoom" by Eva Szasz (1968), and the legendary movie "Powers of Ten" by Charles and Ray Eames (1977). Cosmic Eye takes these historical visualisations to the state-of-the-art using real photographs obtained with modern detectors, telescopes, and microscopes. Other views are renderings of modern computer models. Vector-based blending techniques are used to create a seamless zoom. This 2018-version of Cosmic Eye contains improved graphics and minor technical corrections compared to the 2011-version in portrait format. ► Support via PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/scientificus Donations are vital to develop, update and translate Cosmic Eye. Thank you for any support. All rights were obtained for third-party images and image-data: + Millennium Dark Matter simulation (V. Springel & Virgo Consortium) + 3D galaxy and star positions in the local universe (from www.atlasoftheuniverse.com) + Synthetic rendering of the Milky Way (adopted from N. Rising) + Galaxy M51 (HST, NASA) + Oort cloud rendering (adopted from a BBC illustration) + Planet images (from NASA Voyager 2) + Satellite images by 2012 Google Maps, Europa Technologies, MapLink/Tele Atlas + Retina photography (C. Allison) + Electron microscopy of a leukocyte (J. Ehrman) + Microscopy of red blood cells (internet photos.net) + Synthetic DNA model (adopted from www.sciencephoto.com) Music: Dreamland by Aakash Gandhi (YouTube Audio Library)

Stars such as our Sun burn hydrogen in their cores for most of their lives. Once they run out of this fuel, they puff up into red giants, becoming hundreds of times larger and engulfing nearby planets. As shown in this animation, in the case of the Solar System this will include Mercury, Venus, and even Earth, which will all be consumed by the red-giant Sun in about 5 billion years. Eventually, Sun-like stars lose their outer layers, leaving behind only a burnt-out core, a white dwarf. Such stellar remnants can still host planets, and many of these stars exist in our galaxy. However, until 2019, scientists had never found evidence of a surviving giant planet around a white dwarf. The detection of a Neptune-like exoplanet at WDJ0914+1914 may be the first of many orbiting such stars. More information and download options: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1919c/ Credit: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)

The first images from ESA’s Solar Orbiter are already exceeding expectations and revealing interesting new phenomena on the Sun. This animation combines a series of views captured with several remote-sensing instruments on Solar Orbiter between 30 May and 21 June 2020, when the spacecraft was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun ¬– closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before. The red and yellow images were taken with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, at wavelengths of 30 and 17 nanometers, respectively. The close-up views by EUI show the upper atmosphere of the Sun, or corona, with a temperature of around 1 million degrees. With the power to see features in the solar corona of only 400 km across, these images reveal a multitude of small flaring loops, erupting bright spots and dark, moving fibrils. A ubiquitous feature of the solar surface, uncovered for the first time by these images, have been called ‘campfires’. They are omnipresent minuature eruptions that could be contributing to the high temperatures of the solar corona and the origin of the solar wind. The EUI images are followed by three views based on data from the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument. The blue and red view is a ‘tachogram’ of the Sun, showing the line of sight velocity of the Sun, with the blue side turning to us and the red side turning away. The following view is a magnetogram, or a map of magnetic propertied for the whole Sun, featuring a large magnetically active region in the lower right-hand quadrant of the Sun. The yellow-orange view is a visible light image and represents what we would see with the naked eye: there are no sunspots visible because the Sun is displaying only low levels of magnetic activity at the moment. On larger scales, the Metis coronograph blocks out the dazzling light from the solar surface, bringing the fainter corona into view. Metis observes the corona simultaneously in visible light (shown in green) and ultraviolet light (shown in red) for the first time with unprecedented temporal coverage and spatial resolution. These images reveal the two bright equatorial streamers and fainter polar regions that are characteristic of the solar corona during times of minimal magnetic activity. On even grander scales, the Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) telescope takes images of the solar wind – the stream of charged particles constantly released by the Sun into outer space – by capturing the light scattered by electrons in the wind. The first-light image from SoloHI is shown at the end, as a mosaic of four separate images from the instrument’s four separate detectors. In this view, the Sun is located to the right of the frame, and its light is blocked by a series of baffles; the last baffle is in the field of view on the right-hand side and is illuminated by reflections from the solar array. The partial ellipse visible on the right is the zodiacal light, created by sunlight reflecting off the dust particles that are orbiting the Sun. The signal from the solar wind outflow is faint compared to the much brighter zodiacal light signal, but the SoloHI team has developed techniques to reveal it. Planet Mercury is also visible as a small bright dot near the lower edge of the upper left tile. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Learn more: https://bit.ly/SolarOrbitersFirstImages Credit: Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; PHI Team; Metis Team; SoloHI Team /ESA & NASA ★ Subscribe: http://bit.ly/ESAsubscribe and click twice on the bell button to receive our notifications. Check out our full video catalog: http://bit.ly/SpaceInVideos Follow us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/ESAonTwitter On Facebook: http://bit.ly/ESAonFacebook On Instagram: http://bit.ly/ESAonInstagram On Flickr: http://bit.ly/ESAonFlickr We are Europe's gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out http://www.esa.int/ESA to get up to speed on everything space related. Copyright information about our videos is available here: http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Terms_and_Conditions #ESA #SolarOrbiter #TheSunUpClose