THE COMPLETE COSMOS
An Encyclopedia of the Universe

25 x 10’                      
Science Series
Good for TV, DVD, CVD, Video, Streaming and Video-on-Demand.  
Release 2000 (DVD) and 1998 (TV)

York Films’ best-seller.  Twenty-five 10-minute episodes probe the Solar System, our Milky Way Galaxy, and the depths of the Universe - each segment telling a crisp picture-driven story.  

The Complete Cosmos is a flow of superb graphic animation and the best pictures of the planets, their moons, the Sun, and deep space - a delectable exposition uninterrupted by interviews or on-screen host.  It is good for prime-time, science magazines, educational  programming and perfect as a schedule-filler.  

Each stand-alone episode is rich in facts, graphics and good writing.  The programmes run precisely ten minutes.  Like lego, they can be combined to build programmes running 20, 30 or more minutes.  The Complete Cosmos may be configured as 25 x 10’, 12 x 20’, 8 x 30’, 6 x 40’, 5 x 50’ or 4 x 60’.  Eminently flexible, the series is easily re-edited and re-packaged to suit the particular requirements of broadcasters and all media.

The series:

1.  OUR STAR IS BORN
Birth, life and death of the Sun.  Interior dynamics, exterior
fireworks.  Sunspots, corona, solar wind - latest on our local star.

2.  MERCURY
The most comprehensive portrait ever of this scorched little planet.  
Double sunrises, craters, cracks and - incongruously - maybe polar ice.

3.  VENUS
Beneath the clouds - planetary hell.  A poisonous, crushing atmosphere,
searing heat, volcanoes and a runaway greenhouse effect.  Why?

4.  BLUE PLANET
Evolution of the Earth - and of life.  Internal structure, continental
drift, day length, seasons, oceans, climate, weather and El Nino.

5.  MOON
Born of collision, the story of the Moon.  Its influence
on Earth.  Apollo landings and the recent discovery of water.

6.  RED PLANET
Cold, arid Mars, where next we’ll land.  Polar caps, volcanoes,
the biggest canyon ever seen - Mars probably once had oceans.

7.  JUPITER
Bigger than the other planets combined, a turbulent
gas giant with 16 moons - a voyage through this mini Solar System.

8.  SATURN
The many rings and moons of this exotic gas giant.  
Preview of a landing on Titan, a moon like primitive Earth.  

9.  URANUS AND NEPTUNE
The outer giants.  Uranus - a crazy tilt and a chaotic moon
called Miranda.  Neptune - tempests and a moon spurting geysers.

10. REALM OF THE COMETS
Comets and where they originate - the Oort Cloud
and the Kuiper Belt.  Perhaps tiny Pluto isn’t a planet at all.

11.  EARTH PATROL
Launched into Earth-orbit, the satellites that monitor the health
of our planet - ozone, melting ice-caps, weather, deforestation, navigation.

12.  SPACE FRONTIER
Human space exploration - from Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit
of Earth, to the race for the Moon, and the Apollo landings.

13.  HIGH LIFE
Living and working in space.  Triumphs, tragedies and everyday
practicalities on the Russian space-station Mir and America’s Space Shuttle.

14.  ROBOTS
Our scouts in the Solar System.  Probes that trail-blaze
on Mars, plunge into Jupiter, and land on Saturn’s moon Titan.

15  WHERE NEXT?
A spaceport in Earth-orbit, the colonisation of the Moon
and Mars, the taming of Venus - plus an elevator into space!

16.  PIONEERS      
From the ancient sky-watchers of Babylon to space-age cosmology,
the story of astronomy - Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Hubble.

17.  ECLIPSES AND AURORAE
Celestial shows.  How the solar wind conjures an aurora.  
Lunar and solar eclipses explained.  The 1998 eclipse of the Sun.

18.  IMPACT!
The threat of comets and asteroids.  What would happen
if the spacerock that slew the dinosaurs hit New York today.

19.  LIGHT FANTASTIC
Visible light reveals only part of the Universe.  How other
wavelengths fill out the picture - from gamma rays to radio.

20.  LIFEQUEST
Is there life elsewhere in the Solar System?  Currently, on
Jupiter’s moon Europa?  In the future, on Saturn’s moon Titan?

21.  MILKY WAY
Our galaxy explored, light years explained.  The life and
death of stars.  Supernovae - and the clouds where stars are born.

22.  HUBBLE’S EYE
After astronauts fix its faulty optics, the Hubble Space
Telescope peers back through time to the depths of the cosmos.

23.  INFINITY
The structure of the Universe - galaxies, clusters, strands.
How we measure to a nearby galaxy and to the farthest quasar  

24.  BIG BANG, BIG CRUNCH
Theory of the Big Bang.  From that cataclysmic explosion,
the Universe continues to expand.  But will it stop and reverse?

25.  BLACK HOLES, DARK MATTER
Although invisible, black holes betray their presence.  It’s
the same with dark matter - the “missing” 90% of the Universe.


Producer/director  MARTYN IVES
Science editor  JOHN MASON
Executive producer / writer  DAVID TAYLOR
Animation  JOE SMITH and LEONARD WIKBERG III
Narrator  JON SNOW (British version)  MICHAEL GOLDFARB (American version)  
Music  ERNIE WOOD

Produced by York Films of England
in association with
Channel Four (UK)
DR-TV (Denmark)
Films for the Humanities (USA)
RTE (Ireland)
System TV (France)
Teleac/NOT (The Netherlands)
YLE (Finland)