Hello Earthling! Welcome to my journey to space to discover the luminous Saturn, a planet both mystical and all too real.
I began my journey with some multicolored yarn and a crochet hook, after attempts at sewing spheres proved too frustrating and unsatisfying. I crocheted two half spheres, lined them with fiberfill, and stretched them over halves of a plastic globe.
I had 8 white LEDs, with which I created a circuit running all of them in parallel off a 4.5V 3xAAA battery pack. The soldering was tricky, but I used a bunch of shrink wrap, and with a lot of guidance from our trusty TA Josh, I soldered 100 Ohm resistors to the negative legs of each LED, and then linked all the negative and all the positive ends to each other. It created a rather tidy little string of LEDS!
I created Saturn’s rings in Illustrator and laser-cut and etched them. I added some stars and tags for good measure… (those have yet to be implemented)
With my circuit complete, and my Saturn halves ready, I threaded the long leads through the top of one of the halves and used some electrical tape to situate the LEDS within the plastic globe. Then I sewed each half of the planet onto the middle acrylic ring piece and VOILA!
I give you: SATURN.
UPDATE:
Here’s my Saturn Nightlight explaining the inspiration for the project!