| Summary: | Prepare to immerse yourself in an alien world as if you were standing there yourself. Giant ice fountains rising over 100km high; an ocean hidden beneath a frozen crust of ice; storms twice the size of Earth coloured blood red by a vortex of dust and gases; immense volcanoes that could rip a planet apart - this series reveals the true and awesome beauty of our solar system. Using the very latest breathtaking images sent directly from space, groundbreaking CGI transforms the static into the dramatic. Travelling from the Sun to the far-out reaches of Neptune, the series has at its heart the latest scientific knowledge beamed back from the fleet of probes, rovers and telescopes currently in space, and offers a vivid and unprecedented tour of the world beyond our planet. In this first episode, Empire of the Sun, Brian explores the powerhouse of them all, the sun. In India he witnesses a total solar eclipse - when the link to the light and heat that sustains us is cut off for a few precious minutes. But heat and light are not the only power of the sun over the solar system. In Norway, Brian watches the battle between the sun's wind and earth, as the night sky glows with the northern lights. Beyond earth, the solar wind continues, creating dazzling aurora on other planets. Brian makes contact with Voyager, a probe that has been travelling since its launch 30 years ago. Now 14 billion kilometers away, Voyager has just detected the solar wind is beginning to peter out. But even here we haven't reached the end of the Sun's rule. Brian explains how its greatest power, gravity, reaches out for hundreds of billions of kilometers, where the lightest gravitational touch encircles our solar system in a mysterious cloud of comets.
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