00:06Before modern telescopes, humans could only imagine what the surface of the Sun and the planets looked like.
00:13Now, advanced technology has made it possible to get in close and take images of the Sun and the planets
00:19deep in our solar system.
00:21Now, get ready to see the solar system as you've never seen it before,
00:26and see images that were so good they shocked astronomers.
00:38Burning with the energy of a trillion nuclear bombs per second, the Sun is the largest body in our solar
00:44system,
00:45accounting for 99.86% of the total mass.
00:49One of the most dramatic images of the Sun was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on August 31, 2012,
00:57when a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the Sun's atmosphere erupted into outer space.
01:03This beautiful but deadly coronal mass ejection, CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second.
01:12The planet closest to the Sun, orbiting at an average distance of 36 million miles,
01:18Mercury, has been studied by many spacecraft throughout the years.
01:21But NASA's Messenger spacecraft was the first to orbit the planet.
01:26Images showed the surface covered in craters in all sizes and massive asteroid impact sites,
01:32like the Van Eyck Crater, which is 168 miles in diameter,
01:36and the Caloris Basin, which is 960 miles in diameter, with mountains at the outer rim 1.2 miles high.
01:44These are images with spectral surface measurements that were taken on April 29, 2015.
01:51Messenger snapped more than 200,000 images of Mercury before ending its mission in 2015
01:57with an intentional crash into the planet's surface.
02:00The probe's demise was inevitable, as Messenger had been orbiting Mercury since March 2011 and had run out of fuel.
02:07Right before impact, it sent back its final image, the highest resolution photo of Mercury ever captured.
02:14You'd think that Mercury would be the hottest planet because it's the closest to the Sun,
02:18but our next planet is actually the hottest in the Solar System.
02:24The second planet from the Sun, and also Earth's closest neighboring planet, Venus,
02:29has a thick atmosphere made up mostly of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen gas,
02:36which traps the heat of the Sun, making it a hellish world.
02:40Venera 13 was a probe built in the Soviet Union for the Venera program to explore Venus.
02:46It was the first lander to transmit color images from the surface of Venus.
02:50Venus is a hot world, with surface temperatures as high as 880 degrees Fahrenheit.
02:56The probe was designed to only last 30 minutes, but it must have been built like a tank,
03:01because it continued to transmit data and images for more than two hours after landing on March 1, 1982.
03:08NASA then sent the Magellan spacecraft to Venus in 1990 to image and map the entire surface.
03:15It sent back images of the planet's surface showing evidence of volcanism,
03:19tectonic plate movement, turbulent surface winds, and miles of lava channels,
03:24including one measuring 5,550 miles long.
03:29Another incredible image of the volcano, Mat Mons, that rises three miles.
03:34Once Magellan was finished mapping the entire surface,
03:37it also ended its mission and crashed into the fiery planet.
03:42The third rock from the Sun, the Earth, is very unique,
03:46and the only place known to have life in the Solar System.
03:49There have been lots of amazing images taken of the planet we live on,
03:53but modern satellite photos are probably the most breathtaking,
03:57like this image from NASA of the Earth as it looks right now.
04:01This amazing true color image was taken by NASA's moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer
04:07from 22,000 miles above the Earth, and shows North and South America as they appear from orbit.
04:13The moon also making a guest appearance in the background.
04:17And on December 14, 2020, NASA captured a total solar eclipse with the GOES-16.
04:23That's quite amazing.
04:25But here is something you may not have seen.
04:27In March 2011, a Russian satellite named Electro-L captured incredibly detailed images of the Earth
04:34that appear to rival NASA images.
04:36Many claimed that they are more accurate, and show different things.
04:40But NASA say they're not accurate.
04:42We're not sure.
04:43But which images do you think are the best?
04:45And by the way, remember the Messenger spacecraft?
04:48It snapped a photo of the Earth and of the moon, and sent us a postcard before speeding towards Mercury.
04:54Mars has always been of great interest to humans.
04:57The fourth planet from the Sun, the Red Martian Planet, has been studied heavily.
05:02The Viking Orbiter 1 took stunning snapshots of Mars in 1979, like this photo of the Valles Marineris.
05:10And the Viking 2 Orbiter snapped an image showing the Southern Polar Plains and Polar Icecap.
05:16In 2013, the Mars European Space Agency's Mars Express took highly detailed images of Hebes Kazma,
05:24the northernmost part of Valles Marineris, as seen in this movie created from the images.
05:30But since then, four rovers have already been on the planet's surface, studying and snapping photos.
05:36The images from the Mars Curiosity rover, including a selfie, were the most incredible images from the surface of an
05:43alien world.
05:46This is a 1.8 billion parynamic view, made up of over 1,200 images of Mars, as seen by
05:52Curiosity, which is still operational.
05:57The largest planet in our solar system, the gas giant Jupiter, has the most unique look of all the planets,
06:03with its giant Great Red Spot, a storm on the planet that's been raging for 350 years, and is so
06:10large, it could swallow the Earth whole.
06:12On July 10th, 2017, the Juno spacecraft flew just 5,600 miles above the Great Red Spot, and nabbed the
06:21closest image of the massive storm ever taken.
06:23This image, a bit farther away, is a little bit truer in color to what we would see if we
06:29were orbiting Jupiter.
06:30But Juno also captured unbelievable images of polar regions, which cannot be seen from Earth.
06:35And what surprised astronomers was that Jupiter's North Pole has eight storms swirling at its center,
06:42and they're laid out in a precise geometric pattern, the storms appearing as stable fixtures in Jupiter's atmosphere and not
06:49normal weather.
06:50But more incredible photos would come, and on November 13th, 2018, a new image from Juno was created using data
06:57from the JunoCam imager that's nothing short of breathtaking.
07:01And on June 27th, 2019, the Hubble telescope captured the planet's trademark Great Red Spot, which researchers say is shrinking.
07:10We've got an awesome video coming up on Jupiter, so make sure not to miss it!
07:15As the number one contender for the most beautiful celestial body in the solar system, Saturn is hard to beat
07:22with its iconic rings.
07:24And probably the best images of Saturn to date come from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.
07:30On October 21st, 2002, the spacecraft was 177 million miles away from Saturn when it snapped this photo.
07:38And on March 27th, 2004, as it got closer, took this natural color image as it neared its arrival into
07:46Saturn's orbit.
07:47Now here's a mind-blowing image of Saturn you may never have seen before.
07:51This is Saturn backlit by the Sun, and with that added light, Cassini was able to image the ring system
07:57in a way not possible from Earth, and the result is stunning.
08:00But in 2004, the Hubble telescope was also in on the action, and snapped an amazing photo of an aura.
08:07In 2016, the Cassini spacecraft sent back images of Saturn's northern hemisphere.
08:12What scientists were surprised to see was a hexagonal vortex storms.
08:17They've been studied, but no one's sure how this forms.
08:20On September 15th, 2017, the spacecraft made its final approach towards the gas giant.
08:26And before sending this final image burned up in Saturn's atmosphere like a meteor.
08:32Known as the sideways planet because it rotates on its side, the seventh planet from the Sun.
08:38One of the best images taken, Voyager 2, made a flyby of the planet in 1999.
08:44And this image was taken using three color filters.
08:48And on July 11th and 12th, 2004, a composite image of Uranus obtained by the Keck telescope was published showing
08:55the icy cold world and its rings.
08:58Those bright spots that you see on the surface of the planet are auras.
09:02In November of 2011, the Hubble telescope snapped an awesome image of Uranus.
09:07And a colorized photo shows an icy blue sphere with red rings.
09:11And in 2017, the Hubble telescope captured auras again on Uranus.
09:19Neptune is the eighth planet in our solar system and the farthest away from the Sun.
09:25The only spacecraft that's been close to Neptune is Voyager 2.
09:29One image taken by the spacecraft shows a giant storm raging on the surface of the planet.
09:34Neptune's great dark spot.
09:36Before Voyager 2 would complete its mission and head towards interstellar space,
09:40it made a close approach and snapped this image showing bright cloud streaks in Neptune's atmosphere.
09:47The Hubble telescope has taken a recent image of Neptune and in December 2020 snapped this image with the great
09:53dark spot.
09:54Because it's so far away from us, the best images we have of Neptune from Earth so far
09:59was taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope using a special narrow-field adaptive optics mode of the
10:07multi-unit spectroscopic explorer instrument.
10:11Many argue whether Pluto is a planet or not, but you're here to see some photos.
10:15One of the clearest images of Pluto that you'll ever see was taken by the long-range reconnaissance imager,
10:22which is aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015.
10:27But it wasn't done yet.
10:28And on the next day, this image was put together by combining blue, red, and infrared images taken by the
10:34spacecraft.
10:35The New Horizons spacecraft continued to take crystal-clear images of the planet.
10:40Pluto also has a moon called Charon, as seen in this composite of enhanced color images.
10:46And this image is the most striking, showing mountains across an icy plain.
10:52Humanity has achieved great results getting new images from planets in our solar system and making incredible discoveries.
10:59We're still too far away to get close images of Proxima Centauri, the next planetary system to ours,
11:05and current spacecraft headed in that direction will take thousands of years to get there.
11:10But there are plans to create a wafer-thin nanoprobe called Breakthrough Starshot
11:15that has thin sails to capture energy from a powerful Earth-based laser.
11:20This would accelerate the probe at 134 million miles per hour,
11:24meaning the tiny probes could reach Proxima Centauri in 20 to 25 years.
11:29Just think of the images it could take.
11:31If that happens sometime soon, you'll see it here.
11:38Our friends over at Channel Perception just released a cool new video about NASA's plan to stop an asteroid.
11:46We thought it was really awesome.
11:51So, you should go check it out. We think you'll enjoy it.
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