We're very used to the sun. It's our star. We see it in the sky every day.

We know that it has a lot of impact of what happens to us here on Earth.

But of course, it's even more than that.

The sun actually shapes our entire neighborhood as we orbit around the Milky Way. Understanding the sun and how it works is very,

very fundamental to us. This is NASA's curious universe. Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

I'm Patty Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

This week's adventure takes us to the very center of our solar system.

We're visiting our neighborhood star, The Sun.

Okay. The Sun. For me, what makes the Sun really cool is it's kind of like having a star in your backyard. Hi, I am Nikki Fox and I am the director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. You know, we're used to looking up at night and seeing all the beautiful stars,

beautiful constellations, planets glowing, and it's all wonderful.

And then you realize the sun is just like an average star, but it's very close to us.

And so, number one, it means that we can study it in very,

very, very detailed ways. But also because we live so close to it, we kind of live in the atmosphere

of the sun. If we can understand our star, then it helps us understand stars in other solar systems

or stellar systems. So everything's happening in heliophysics.

The Sun is responsible for life as we know it.

Its gravity holds the solar system together,

keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest particles of debris in its orbit.

But it also drives a vast space weather system of particles that weave through space.

And that's what NASA's Heliophysics Division studies.

The sun's outer atmosphere actually moves all the way out through the edge of our solar system.

That's actually what's creating this boundary.

...