What's directly above the Sun? Every planet, moon, asteroid and almost every spacecraft we've ever launched moves in one thin, flat plane. Leaving it is one of the hardest things in spaceflight — so hard that we've only seriously tried twice: Ulysses in 1990, and Solar Orbiter today, which in 2025 gave us the first-ever look at the Sun's south pole.

In this video: why the solar system is flat, what lies above and below the plane, why going "up" is harder than going to Pluto, and what we finally saw when we looked down on our star.

CHAPTERS

0:00 What's above the plane?

1:25 Chapter 1 – The plate

3:36 Chapter 2 – Flat everywhere

5:50 Chapter 3 – The edge of the plate

8:29 Chapter 4 – The hardest direction

11:27 Chapter 5 – Where the plate came from

14:54 Chapter 6 – Looking down on the Sun

17:25 Where to next?

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VISUALS & CREDITS

Footage and images are used under their original licences. Many have been modified (cropped, captioned, animated).

NASA (public domain)

NASA · NASA/JPL · NASA/JPL-Caltech · NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS · NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute · NASA/JPL/DLR · NASA/JSC · NASA/SDO · NASA/SOHO · NASA/NOAA DSCOVR EPIC · NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio (incl. Tom Bridgman, Scott Wiessinger) · NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI · NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Roman Tkachenko · NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona · NASA GSFC/ISAL, NASA JSC · NASA, ESA, A. Pagan (STScI), Q. Zhang (Caltech) · NASA/Kim Shiflett · NASA/Keegan Barber · NASA/Aubrey Gemignani · NASA/Shane Kimbrough · NASA (Artemis I, Artemis II)

ESO – CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

ESO · ESO/S. Guisard · ESO/L. Calçada/spaceengine.org · G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO · ESO/P. Horálek · ESO/H.H. Heyer · ESO/J.C. Muñoz-Mateos · ESO/E. Slawik · ESO/J. Pérez · ESO/C. Malin · ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) · ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), ESA/Hubble and NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt · ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Cieza/M. Kornmesser · ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Andrews et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello · EHT Collaboration

ESA/Webb & ESA/Hubble – CC BY 4.0

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI · NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; J. DePasquale, A. Koekemoer, A. Pagan (STScI) · NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Pagan (STScI), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona) · NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; Ricardo Hueso, Judy Schmidt · ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, Tazaki et al. · NASA, ESA, and M. Brown (Caltech) · ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. de Jong; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt · NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

ESA – CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo)

ESA · ESA/Gaia/DPAC · ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI Team · ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI, EUI and SPICE Teams · ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team, D. Berghmans (ROB) & ESA/Royal Observatory of Belgium · ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team, E. Kraaikamp (ROB) · ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; ESA/Proba-2/SWAP · ESA/BepiColombo/MTM · ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

Other

IAU (CC BY 4.0) · Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand (CC BY 4.0) · Gtoffoletto, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Sage Ross, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Joseph Wright of Derby, "A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery", 1766 (public domain) · "The Elements of Astronomy", textbook, 1919 (public domain) · Pexels

Animations, graphics, intro and music: Orrery (original).