An Orrery

[Poita]

It sounds like a speech impediment, but is much more fun.
My 11 yr old daughter was doing a science project for school, so decided to build an orrery as part of it.

Here is the finished product, it is a great educational tool and she really enjoyed studying the gearing as much as using the final product.

She timelapsed part of the construction as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqE52_TGbI0

All in all it was a great project to work on with her.

[JB80]

Wow, very nice. :)

I'm not sure what I was doing when I was 11 but I'm fairly certain we weren't knocking anything out of that standard.

[astro_nutt]

Hi Peter!
It is a majestic piece of work.
I built a tower version from a weekly magazine, (a piece each week..etc)
Great fun to build and fascinating to watch! Moreso, it is easier to explain how our Solar System is structured.
Nice one!

[Allan_L]

Hi Peter,
Fantastic project.
Looks like it was constructed from a pre-formed kit?

Cheers
al

[ZeroID]

Real Cool ! well done ...
Where did the kit come from ? Wouldn't mind getting one myself for 'SteamPunk' stuff. Slowly making up an outfit for 'Her Majesties Royal Colonial Astronomers Corp' or something like that. One of those 'brassed up' ( gold paint ) would go excellently with my Observatory Pith Helmet and brass telescope. Hunting round for old gear to be steam punked up.

[Poita]

planetaria.com.au has quite reasonable priced kits available.

[jjjnettie]

:D Sensational.

[shane.mcneil]

Very cool.

[erick]

I checked the price and shipping - very reasonable and it is an Australian product! Must save my pennies and support them.

"We are a small business based in Sydney Australia, with an interest in reviving objects from the past and introducing some new. Creating learning tools that are interactive, stylish and unusual. Objects that can be displayed in your home or office that will be a topic of conversation. The mini3 is the first of our planetary designs with more products currently on the drawing board. The mini3 is entirely produced in Australia and there has been hundreds of hours in the design and testing to bring it to you at an affordable price, this is not a mass produced plastic product we pride ourselves on this and are only producing limited numbers of the mini3 making them a collectable. We do hope you enjoy your mini3 as much as we have in bringing them to you and welcome your feedback."

[BPO]

If you ever get a chance to visit Tokyo Disneysea, be sure and check out the room in the castle where this lives:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pulpmojo/203044460/in/photostream

http://www.parkothek.info/photos/27/58.jpg

I would travel to Tokyo any time just to see it again.

[Shark Bait]

That is a work of art. It reminds me of the scenes from the Dark Crystal.

[Poita]

We were very pleased with it. My daughter had designed a working system of gears and wanted to construct one as a school project.
Unfortunately my wood-working skills were not up to the task. As she had modeled the entire thing in CAD, we cast about for a laser-cutting service to make up the parts for us, then stumbled across planetaria in out searches. The cost of getting parts cut was way more than the cost of the kit, so we settled for the pre-cut kit.
It turned out great though, and it has been used already in her class to get across a whole swathe of concepts from gearing, to manufacturing, discussion of the venus transit, phases of the moon and so on. We built a small light to replace the 'Sun' in the middle to show the night/day cycles. It has been a great educational tool, and also looks great on her side-table.
It was a really worthwhile exercise and we enjoyed designing our own, even though we bought a kit in the end, the build was very satisfying.

[kustard]

I bought one of these and put it together with my daughter checking in on my progress every 10 minutes or so... it's really quite cool :)

[niko]

looks terrific Peter (and daughter!)

[rally]

These are great fun for the family to assemble.

I got one of these for my son to assemble and the fit on a couple of the parts wasn't perfect
Richard was straight onto it and organised to send me a replacement kit at his expense.

He developed them as a project with his own son and was terribly concerned that the fault might have left my son disappointed.

What more can I say !

Rally