You can see these from your front walk for only about $500. Look up "Coronado PST." Unfortunately, the level of detail is just slightly less impressive; say, a trout vs. a blue whale.
3, well, the Sun is 100 Earth's across at the widest point, so you can probably estimate from there. The full cubic volume of the Sun is approximately 1 million Earths.
Off the top of my head, without googling, I'd guess at least a thousand Earths would fit in there.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a01…
It's better in ultra-violet too... Swoon! SDO...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV57…