BBC - The Planets (2019) 1080p HDTV x264 AAC MVGroup

Professor Brian Cox tells the extraordinary life story of our solar system. For four and a half billion years each of the planets has been on an incredible journey, filled with astonishing spectacle and great drama. Using the data from our very latest explorations of the solar system combined with groundbreaking CGI this series reveals the unimaginable beauty and grandeur of eight planets whose stories we are only just beginning to understand.

Part 1: A Moment in the Sun: The Terrestrial Planets
Traces the development of the four rocky worlds closest to the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Born together, they battled the unbelievable violence of the early solar system to become stable planets. For a while each had a moment of hope when they enjoyed almost earth-like conditions. Yet today Mercury is a scorched barren world. Venus is a runaway greenhouse world with a scorching atmosphere and Mars is a frozen desert. Only on Earth do oceans – and life – persist.

Part 2: The Two Sisters: Earth and Mars
Early in the story of the planets, there was a beautiful water world, an oasis of hope in a sterile universe. But this was not Earth - this was the young Mars. Professor Brian Cox continues his tour of the solar system revealing that it was once home to not one, but two blue planets.

For millions of years, Mars enjoyed oceans blanketed by a thick atmosphere and a temperature climate. Whilst at the same moment Earth was a far less favourable habitat. Our planet was toxic to life today, her atmosphere choked with carbon dioxide and her oceans, acidic.

Part 3: The Godfather: Jupiter
Professor Brian Cox continues his exploration of the solar system with a visit to a planet that dwarfs all the others: Jupiter. Its enormous size gives it a great power that it has used to manipulate the other planets - a power both for good and bad that it wields to this day.

Jupiter is not only the biggest but also the oldest planet in the solar system. It alone witnessed the birth of the Sun and ever since its immense gravity has shaped the destiny of the other worlds. Soon after its birth, its orbit shifted inwards bringing it ever closer to the sun. As it moved, it created chaos in the the region of space that would become the asteroid belt, ensuring that no planet could form here, only a tiny failed planet Ceres, which remains today.

Part 4: Life Beyond the Sun: Saturn
Saturn is the jewel of the solar system, the most seductive of all the planets, but as Professor Brian Cox reveals - it wasn’t born that way.

Raised in the freezing outer reaches of the solar system, Saturn began life as a strange planet of rock and ice. Born outside the snow line, with an abundance of building materials, it soon grew to dwarf the Earth, drawing in colossal amounts of the hydrogen and helium that permeated the early solar system. In time Saturn was transformed into a gas giant, ring-less and similar looking to its great rival, Jupiter. As the gas giant grew, its original rocky form was lost forever, becoming part of the planet’s core, where temperatures are hotter than the surface of the sun, and pressures so intense that carbon there falls as diamond rain.

Part 5: Into the Darkness: Ice Worlds
Professor Brian Cox journeys to the remotest part of the solar system, a place that the most mysterious planets call home. These worlds remain shadowy for a simple reason. Beyond Saturn we have only ever visited the most distant planets once.

Uranus – barely visible to the naked eye - was once thought to be the furthest planet from the Sun. But with the telescope and some careful viewing we discovered it had a companion: Neptune. Thanks to a rare alignment of the planets in 1976, Voyager 2 was sent for our only flyby of these ice worlds. There we discovered far more vibrant planets than we ever imagined. Even at such cold temperatures, great storms whip around these frozen worlds that are home to spectacular moons and intricate ring systems. After a few hours of observation at each planet, Voyager 2 left them behind. We have never returned.