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Check out this simulation from Alphonse Swineheart of what it would be like if one were moving away from the sun's surface at the speed of light and then passing all the planets. It looks so slow and yet, this is lightspeed.
The especially fascinating thing is that the sun is so big and so hot, that it's not possible to escape it fast enough to avoid being instantly vaporised, even at the speed of light. Just look at how slowly it shrinks - and that's at lightspeed! To get a sense of just how huge our "smallish" star is, light actually takes a full 4.6 seconds to travel the sun's diameter. For very large stars the time is in hours and days to cross their diameter. Think about that for a moment.
The especially fascinating thing is that the sun is so big and so hot, that it's not possible to escape it fast enough to avoid being instantly vaporised, even at the speed of light. Just look at how slowly it shrinks - and that's at lightspeed! To get a sense of just how huge our "smallish" star is, light actually takes a full 4.6 seconds to travel the sun's diameter. For very large stars the time is in hours and days to cross their diameter. Think about that for a moment.
