2015-02-25 BBC:星光七纪元-11（在线收听）

This whole process explains the distinctive shape of all solar systems including our own.

The reason why you see all the planets going around the Sun in the same direction on the same plane is because they are all formed from the same belt, from the same disc.

Remarkably just using observations with a naked eye and the power of deduction, Copernicus had created the first accurate family portrait of a star, surrounded by its offspring, the planets, but birth is just the beginning. Every morning at dawn the Sun becomes the only star that we can see in the sky, a star in middle age like 90% of all the other ones, it's only special to us because it's so close.

Once it was realised that the Sun was a star, it opens up an enormous window to our understanding of the universe because the Sun really is the only star that we can properly see and by looking at the Sun we have this magnificent laboratory so close to us, we can actually see it, we can actually study it, we can actually see the surface, make models of the interior, measure a lot of things in the atmosphere, and by studying the Sun in that way, we are studying the stars.