Orrery

 

An orrery is a mechanical model of the Solar System that illustrates or predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons, usually according to the heliocentric model. It may also represent the relative sizes of these bodies; but since accurate scaling is often not practical due to the actual large ratio differences, a subdued approximation may be used instead. Though the Greeks had working planetaria, the first orrery that was a planetarium of the modern era was produced in 1704, and one was presented to Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery – whence came the name. They are typically driven by a clockwork mechanism with a globe representing the Sun at the centre, and with a planet at the end of each of the arms.
At the court of William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel two complicated astronomic clocks were built in 1561 and 1563-1568, which show on four sites the ecliptical position of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the Moon, Sun and Dragon (Nodes of the Moon) according to Ptolemy, a Calendar, the Sunrise and Sunset and an automated celestial sphere with an animated Sun symbol which, for the first time on a celestial globe, show the real position of the Sun, including the equation of time. The clocks are now on display in Kassel at the Astronomisch-Physikalisches Kabinett and in Dresden at the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon.
In 1764, Benjamin Martin devised a new type of planetary model, in which the planets were carried on brass arms leading from a series of concentric or coaxial tubes. With this construction it was difficult to make the planets revolve, and to get the moons to turn around the planets. Martin suggested that the conventional orrery should consist of three parts: the planetarium where the planets revolved around the Sun, the tellurion (also tellurian or tellurium) which showed the inclined axis of the Earth and how it revolved around the Sun, and the lunarium which showed the eccentric rotations of the Moon around the Earth. In one orrery, these three motions could be mounted on a common table, separately using the central spindle as a prime mover.
Orreries are usually not built to scale. Human orreries, where humans move about as the planets, have also been constructed, but most are temporary. There is a permanent human orrery at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, which has the six ancient planets, Ceres, and comets Halley and Encke. Uranus and beyond are also shown, but in a fairly limited way. Another is at Sky's the Limit Observatory and Nature Center in Twentynine Palms, CA. This is a true to scale (20 billion to one), true to position (accurate to within four days) human orrery. The first four planets are relatively close to one another, but the next four require a certain amount of hiking in order to visit them.