Duration: 1:40

7,908 views

233

This was a project my dad and I decided to tackle after seeing a kickstarter campaign offering something similar but its price was a little too rich for us.

Its a scale map of all primary stars around Sol out to 25LY. The colours are representative of the star in at that location and all have a very subtle shimmer. We've halved the vertical scale to help keep things fairly 'galactic plane' like as otherwise its as tall as it is wide.

Dad worked on the laser cutting and engraving while I did the electronics and software (it runs off an arduino nano and uses 25 RGB leds). We were going to put beads on the top of the perspex rods but it honestly looks better without them as even to the naked eye, it gives a pinout glare of light. These beads if used would have reflected the rough size of the star too.

I might try and in fill the lines and text with white paint as its not very readable currently if I can do it without marking the black top.