Astroblog: Building an Orrery (part 2)

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Building an Orrery (part 2)

As I mentioned before, MiddleOne and I are building an Orrery, a model solar system. We are putting together one that is coming in parts as a magazine (Build a Model Solar System), so we have to wait about two weeks for a chunk of parts, and then we have to wait even longer to get enough parts to make a chunk of Orrery.

But we finally got enough parts to get started, MiddleOne was champing at the bit, and well, the whole thing is really cool, and a good chance to learn about the solar system.

The first thing we learnt was that the screws are really small, and have a startling tendency to roll away into hard to find places. The second thing we learned is that you need a really small (as in narrow) set of Allen Keys for many of the screws (luckily we had one of those, advantage of a geek household).

The third thing we learned is that most of the tiny screws were too small for MiddleOnes hands, so he gets to do the big chunky things, and I set up, or actually do, the smallest screws (which always seem to be located in the most inconvenient spots). Still, instead of watching TV we have got Mercury and Venus set up. It even works at this stage, so we can see the Venus - Mercury periodicity as they orbit!

We are hanging out for the next section, Earth Moon. If you want to see a video of the construction and final Orrery, here is a video.

Labels: miscelaneous

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 6:33 am

Comments:

I live in the US and am building the Orrery, buying the parts from someone over the internet. Unfortunately, after I got part 25 the person stopped offering the parts so I have half of an Orrery!
Is there any out there that could get me parts 26-52?
quidproquo14@hotmail.com

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:10 am

I was going to say you might have to subscribe to the Magazine, but it looks like it you can't get it in the US! Perhaps there is a specialist magazine importer in the US which can get it for you.

# posted by