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Wonders of the Solar System

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Availability: Only 1 left in stock, order soon!
Fulfilled by SecondStoryBooks

Arrives Monday, Sep 7
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Format: DVD September 7, 2010


Description

Experience the extraordinary…in our planet’s own backyard. Wonders explores some of the most amazing features of our very own solar system – how the forces of nature carved out beauty and order from the chaos of space; how our home planet doesn’t sit in magnificent isolation but is intimately connected with the rest of the solar system; and how these connections have created the haven we call Earth. Using the latest scientific knowledge and breathtaking images beamed back from the fleet of probes, rovers and telescopes currently in space, this gorgeous imagery will is paired with some of the most spectacular, extreme locations on Earth help to reveal wonders never thought possible.

Genre: Educational/Science & Technology/National Geographic/Nature & Wildlife


Format: AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, Multiple Formats, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen


Contributor: Wonders of the Solar System


Language: English


Number Of Discs: 3


Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.781


MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)


Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 1.93 x 1.3 inches; 3.84 ounces


Media Format ‏ : ‎ AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, Multiple Formats, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen


Run time ‏ : ‎ 5 hours


Release date ‏ : ‎ September 7, 2010


Actors ‏ : ‎ Wonders of the Solar System


Subtitles: ‏ ‎ English


Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)


Studio ‏ : ‎ BBC Home Entertainment


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Top Amazon Reviews


  • Fantastic, and a Great Value!
This 3-disk DVD set is definitely worth every penny. The knowledge contained in these disks is not only fascinating, but oftentimes entertaining and awe-inspiring. I challenge anyone to get through this series without an "ooh" an "ah" or a "WOW". The footage is gorgeously shot and the special effects beautifully rendered, and though some bits repeat a few times (I believe the animation of the big bang is shown at least once in every episode), none of it really detracts. In fact, it often gives a bit of breathing room, where you can sit and absorb the new things you've just been shown. Both the presenter and the professionals he speaks to on the show have a lot of knowledge to offer, and I doubt there are many people who will watch this program without learning at least one thing. Professor Brian Cox is an excellent presenter. As many have said before me, he puts everything in language that's easy to understand, without being the least bit condescending. He's genuinely, contagiously excited about the material he's presenting, almost always with a nearly childlike grin plastered onto his face. On top of this, he's charismatic, and often quite funny. This makes the program feel less like a classroom than it does a journey of discovery. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the third disk contains Prof. Cox's two HORIZON specials, "What on Earth is Wrong With Gravity?" and "Do You Know What Time It Is?" Though there are no other special features on the disks (No behind-the scenes or deleted footage to be found), these specials bring the amount of material on the disks to about 7 hours. I'm definitely not complaining, as this is quite a bit of footage for the price. (Edit: I had miscalculated, originally. The specials were marked into 4 scenes each, and as this was not in a separate scene selection menu, I thought the specials were each 4 episodes. However, each special is about an hour long, and the menu is for the different scenes.) Put all of this together, and you have a series that's not only valuable in the amount of material in comparison with the price, but in the value of the material itself. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2010 by MorganEAshton

  • Awe inspiring!
I've watched this Blu-ray discs with my 7 year old daughter, and both of us really enjoyed it. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys scientific documentaries. The basic structure of the film is that the professor Brian Cox introduces a certain topic about the solar system (say how Mars has been geographically dead for past oh so many million years), then discuss this by contrasting that with the Earth by traveling to sites to illustrate the topic (say a volcano in Africa). For a person like me, who already has a reasonable knowledge on the subject matter, this is a somewhat roundabout way of approaching the subject. On the other hand, for someone like my daughter, the footage of the Earth really helps her relate to this otherwise abstract and hard-to-imagine stuff that's out there. Also, to be fair, those Earth scenes are quite gorgeous on their own --- after all, this is BBC we are talking about! I also enjoyed Brian Cox as the narrator. You can see that he's genuinely excited about all that he talks about and sees, and that makes you happy. It felt real and sincere, but not over the top. His enthusiasm is contagious. It made my eyes swell up from time to time. Now, I suppose this focus on scenes on the Earth is also a reflection of a real challenge in a film like this, namely that there just aren't that many *actual* pictures of those celestial bodies, let alone videos! And I think this is where the film is a bit weak. Of the precious few actual photographs taken by spacecrafts and rovers on Mars, the film chooses to show most of them by printing them out in papers and have Brian point to them in his fingers. I wish I could have seen them in larger resolutions up close. The other thing that I think the film could have done better is to convey the astronomical (literally!) time and distance that we are talking about. Let's take distance for example --- if you've taken a trans-atlantic or trans-pacific flight, you should have the gut-feeling sense of how unimaginably large the Earth is, yet its diameter is "mere" 8,000 miles. Sun, on the other hand, has a diameter of 800,000 miles. That's a difference between a quarter coin and the height of an adult human being. But yet the distance between Sun and Earth is more like 80,000,000 miles (aka 1AU.) That is, if you imagine the solar system on your desk, Sun & Earth 3 feet apart, then the size of the Earth is only about the thickness of a human hair! And oh, did I tell you that the nearest star is 270,000AU away? That's just bat-s*** insane!! Yet the film, in an attempt to show more in screen, fails to do justice to this ridiculous vastness of the Universe. I'd have really loved to see the Google Earth-ish zoom-in/zoom-out actions that actually portrayed the accurate proportions and distances of the Sun and the planets. Or when they show you a fly-by CG of the great canyon of Mars, I'd have loved to see the Manhattan island posed in to help us grasp the monumental scale of that canyon. In those computer-generated scenes, the timescale is shifted substantially too, which also has the undesirable effect of making things feel smaller (for example, when you see Jupiter zooms in, you see the pattern of the Jupiter changes rapidly, yet if you actually are on a spaceship approaching Jupiter, it'll look completely stationary.) I don't think it's just me who gets endlessly fascinated by the sheer size of these stuff, right? I wish I could have seen those. Anyway, don't let my nerd comments scare you away. I still thoroughly enjoyed this film after all. A highly recommended buy. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2012 by kousuke kawaguchi

  • Eye Candy With Substance
Bottom-line up front--a breathtaking series, both from a visual perspective and from a learning perspective. First shown on BBC in mid-2010, this series is available on "regular" DVD and Blu-Ray. If you've got a Blu-Ray player, spend the extra for the HD edition; it's worth it. The presenter, Brian Cox, is the antithesis of the "science geek" as portrayed by people like "The Science Guy"; however, he has real credentials (a PhD in astrophysics and works on the Large Hadron Collider). This series blends telescope and space probe photography seamlessly with computer graphics to help you see and understand the solar system and how it works, and the amazing places that populate our neighborhood. In addition, Cox's enthusiasm shines through the series, and he has a knack for explaining complicated items in a manner that makes them intuitively obvious. For example, his explanation of why the planets appear to move in a retrograde motion in the sky is simple, elegant, and made the non-science types in the family say "now I understand what you've been saying". Pay no attention to the couple of one-star reviews that complain that they wanted pretty pictures and instead got education. With this series, you get both--plenty of pretty pictures, and lots of education presented beautifully. I look forward to the coming series "Wonders of the Universe". ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2011 by Martin Cox

  • Great for learning about the stars!
Wonders of the Solar System is a must-watch for anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered about the vastness of the universe. With its beautiful cinematography, educational content, and Brian Cox's infectious passion, this series is a visual and intellectual feast that both inspires and informs. It's a journey that reminds us of the incredible wonders that lie beyond our home planet, leaving viewers with a renewed sense of awe and curiosity about the cosmos. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2025 by David O.

  • Down to earth discussions of the solar system. Bravo!
I am happy with this series and the Wonders of the Universe too. The videos link the cosmos to us like no other since the Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Brian Cox said that the Cosmos influenced his career choice on his seeing the series as a child. The influence is clear, at least to me, in the two series. Like Cosmos, the Wonders series link the Universe to us in a significant and personal level. If you think that the Universe and the Cosmos are hard sciences, separate and apart from our existence both in the distant past and the present, these videos will change your mind. Cox is 44, but he brings a youthful zeal to these videos that exceeds the passion for science that Carl Sagan demonstrated in his series. This helps to hold my attention and to ponder what makes him so excited that doesn't grab me the same way. The series ponders the visible universe based on physics and goes further by hinting on how the visible universe shaped our religious and philosophical thoughts down the ages. One example of this is his comment on the need by worldwide civilizations to explain birth and death. He concludes by offering his belief on life and death based and linked on the physics of the birth and death of stars. But he cleverly ignores that the scientific belief in the truth of the Laws of Physics as interpreted by the language of mathematics can be fallible. Who knows, maybe 100 or 200 years from now scientist may look back to the 21th century and smile at the misinterpretations of the Laws of Nature by our generation of scientists just like our scientists look back 100 years and smile that the best minds of the early 20th century believed that the Universe was unchanging, with no beginning, and consisted of only the Milky Way. New discoveries and advances in technology and can make the best and brightest minds look silly in hindsight. Already, physicists appear confused to me. Within my lifetime, if a scientist believed in the Big Bang theory he/she was considered a crackpot. Now, if a scientist does not believe in the Big Bang Theory he or she is considered a crackpot. But the crackpots who don't believe in the Big Bang are starting to make noise that cannot be ignored. The theory of Multi-verses, for example, is offered as an alternative to the Big Bang as an explanation for why the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. Maybe Hoyle was more right than wrong when he ridiculed the Big Bang theory. The fact that Cox does not go into detail on any of the above theories, I believe will give his series a longer-shelf life than the Universe Series sponsored by the Science Channel. We will have to wait 20 years or so to find out. The Sagan Cosmos series is still being offered. Now in DVD from the original VHS format to show how a well done series can have a very long shelf life indeed. Finally, the DVD and Blue ray contains scenes that were cut by the History Channel since the videos go beyond 55 minutes on average and some beyond an hour--nice to own and see the full versions. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2012 by Carlos Rosario

  • Infectious passion for life.
First of all; stop reading this reviews. Go on and buy both blu-rays (wonders of the universe as well) and then waste time reading as you wait the order, because believe me; you will want to watch this. For all the no-somuchscience out there, let me tell you that this series are for everyone; explained with such easy fun and a surprising awe that only Brian Cox can provide, that sometimes you will forget that you are watching a physics documentary. Every episode it's a fresh kick that compels you to get out of bed, and go live life to the fullest; watch the skies and appreciate the tiny world we live in. They are a nice mix of space CGI with footage of all around the world, capturing those living earth examples of what you'll see out there, making them absolutely not boring at all. I'm gonna watch them all over again, everytime i'm feeling sad of feeling blue. That's how invigorating they are. Nicely done Brian. Can't wait for the third part. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2011 by Albert

  • Fantastic!
I really enjoy these types of DVD's, but there is usually some disheveled, old scientist hosting. Not this time - Brian Cox does a great job. It's easy to see that he is genuinely excited and interested in conveying the knowledge of the cosmos to everyone watching at home. The pictures from other planets were really breathtaking, such as sunsets on Mars and even the northern lights on Saturn. The way the tell the information makes it easy to understand, too. There are several excellent diagrams and computer-generated models, but Brian also does some very simple demonstrations with household objects that everyone can easily understand. Also, the settings are incredible as Brian travels to India, Norway, and many other destinations to give viewers a true sense of wonder as he explores jungles, deserts, and icy waters. Only two very small negatives (in my opinion) of this DVD: 1. They started to lose me in the "doomsday meteor" portion on disc 2. It was bordering on ridiculous when the music begins to pick up and play this very percussion-heavy theme. Luckily, they don't dwell on it and the video moves on. 2. The cameraman/producer gets carried away with the shot "Brian's face - Brian's face moves - direct sunlight into the camera! - Brian's face blocks sun again - Repeat." Those very small drawbacks are not nearly enough to drop this review even one star. This Blu-Ray is already in my top favorites along with Planet Earth, as the scenery is breathtaking, the information is relevant and easy to understand, and I think suitable for even grade school kids wanting to learn about the solar system. Overall and OUTSTANDING edition to my collection, and I'm already watching it for the second time! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2010 by Zonzilla

  • Outstanding!
This series and the "Wonders of the Universe" set are two of my favorite shows about the universe. Professor Cox is soft spoken, but his passion and knowledge are clearly evident. The series is well-produced, and the information in each episode is well worth watching... many times! There's so much to absorb, that I could watch it over and over. The information is presented in a very easy-to-understand manner. Even more technical or mathematical or scientific information is presented so that someone with only basic knowledge of science or math can grasp the topics. At the same time, it's not "dumbed down" to the point of being worthless. The blu-ray version is exceptional. Sound quality is amazing on my surround sound system. Highly recommended! I wish they'd do another series (or ten) with Professor Cox! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2017 by TJR

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