© -

Interns at the workshop have recently been working on designing and building a large planetarium. This has of course been very educational, but also, we now (almost!) have a very nice working planetarium, that could be displayed on open days or could find its way to an Open Science Hub.

The planetarium features over twenty plexiglass gears, coupled together to mimick the rotation of the planets around the Sun. The fastest model planet, Mercury, is driven by a motor at a speed that makes model Earth rotate around once per minute.

All components are 3d-printed and laser cut in the ASTRON workshop. The designs are made by Tobias Oosterhuis and Melissa van Turnhout, who both have worked at the workshop, with help from Scott Polotto and Sjouke Kuindersma.

The planetarium will be finished in the coming time, with the most obvious finishing touch being putting planets onto the rods.

A movie of the almost-finished planetarium in action is at https://astron.nl/~dijkema/planetarium_annotated.mp4