March 6, 2013
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Learning Something New
Last week, I was sick, sick, sick. And when you’re sick, you don’t want to move. So I didn’t. I laid down on the sofa. But every child was going out of his/her mind, because Mama wasn’t schooling them. I just wasn’t up to it. So we had two movie afternoons. And we watched the two ‘Tomb Raider’ movies. Which, by the way, are very educational, geographically and historically speaking. As a few added perks, it has Simon, the Transformer-like robot (which geeked Isaac) and superhero-esque fights (which thrilled Ethan and Aaron), and a kickass heroine (which geeked Lydia and I). What’s not to like?
In the first movie, Lara Croft is trying to find two pieces of a triangle that were hidden at different ends of the earth. If they’re put together at a specific time (a planetary alignment and solar eclipse), the device would allow the holder to bend/manipulate time. I know… silly, but it makes for a fun adventure movie. Anyhow, one of the pieces is hidden in a cave… and in the bowels of this cave, there is an enormous machine. It’s a mobile of the planets, moving around. It’s THE kewlest machine, and I thought to myself, ‘wouldn’t it be fantastic to find one? I wonder if they even make them, anymore.’Problem is, I didn’t even know what they were called. So I finally remembered (while sitting by the computer), and I started doing searches, trying to find what I was looking for. It turns out that the mechanical device is called an ‘Orrery’, named after the man who first made it – Charles Orrery.
Orrery, by ant_ix at DeviantArt
((click that link. The blown up version of this is SO awesome!!))There seems to be a severe lack of availability of them, out there. I found a link to the website of a sundial/orrery maker in England, but apparently the site was closed when the man died. There’s another man, though, whose site is not defunct – LINK here. You can get a cheap version for $300 (LINK) if you do a search for ‘ugly’ on eBay, or you can get one for $1700 (LINK) that is far more beautiful… but since both are completely out of my price range, it’s moot. I also found two sites in which people built their own orreries (LINK and LINK). My Brian is a machinist… think I could get him to build me one?Anyhow, I was fascinated by these. I think they’re beautiful… as pretty as the astrolabes I was drooling over in November (LINK), and the aeolian harps (harps played by the wind) that I found last summer (LINK). I love these things… they’re all so fascinating, aren’t they? And nobody even uses them, anymore. But they’re so beautiful, so carefully crafted and so meticulous!
But for the record, I learned something new today. I now know what an orrery is!
Comments (6)
Oh my those are awesome! That one by DeviantArt- ugh I want one now, especially if the sun is really lit up like the pictues shows. I like the base of the last one best, but the top part of the DeviantArt one best.
I have never really studied much astronomy or astrology. What would you say all those writings & diagrams on the last one are?
Seasons, months, constellations (zodiac/12 Tribes).
If you could get Brian to make you one…could you get him to make a few for sale? Because I have wanted an orrery for Years. Since I saw one in “The Dark Crystal”, in fact. :sigh:
They have one on ‘The Dark Crystal’? I don’t remember the movie, much… except that I hated it as a child. Hrm!
I know! I told him when he called at lunch (and he never knows what I’m going to throw out there, on our lunch chats!) that there’s a HUGE market for these things – if you could figure out how to make them with bulk metal and put them out there, I bet they’d go like hotcakes even at $50 (I know I would seriously consider a nicely made metal one for that price!). But alas, I think he laughed me off. It’s too bad, really. I bet we could make a fortune manufacturing and marketing something like that. If only I knew how to cut precision metal like he did… I could go out and whip ‘em up in the afternoon while he was at work (in all my spare time.) ROFL!!!
Hon, I’d scrape up $100 for one, if I could find it. Think of the Astronomy! (He’d have to include Pluto, though. When I was a kid, we had 9 planets – and we still should.
)
Yeah, there’s a big one in the……female witch? Mystic? Whatever’s house. She used it to explain the gelfling prophecy. I think the movie’s weird….Ian doesn’t like it at all. It’s too dark for him.
It was too dark for me, too. Ian’s in good company. :yes:
Brian came home and looked at Zeamon’s plans (a fraction of them, I didn’t realize how extensive they were), and said that Zeamon had 7 MONTHS of machining time put into his version. So apparently $1K isn’t a bad price for the sucker. And his whole attitude from moment one was “I hate the idea, I’ll come up with every reason I can to shoot it down” before he even looked at the plan, so I kinda saw that coming.
No urrery making at our house. LoL!! :p