LEGO Ideas Earth and Moon

PaulbotBuilds built a fully working representation of the Earth and Moon as a MOC and submitted it to LEGO Ideas. If there are enough votes for this design, LEGO may put it into production.

It is a fully functioning planetarium for the Earth and the Moon, with a handle that can be rotated, causing the Moon to magically revolve around the Earth.

• Orbital period - 27:1 corresponds to the 27.3 days it takes for the moon to actually orbit the Earth.
• Orbital direction - the moon revolves around the earth with Prograde motion (moving in the same direction as the earth rotates), just like in real life.
• Tilt of the Earth - it is 22.5 degrees, not far from the true tilt of the Earth at 23.4 degrees.
• Angle of the moon's orbital plane - The moon orbits the Earth in an inclined plane of about 5 degrees.
• Relative size - the relative size of the moon compared to the Earth corresponds well to the actual scale of about 1:4.
• Earth details - All continents of the LEGO brick-built, miniaturized Earth are shown

Most of the gears that make the planetarium function are hidden, so they are all housed in a vintage-style octagonal box and the panels decorated with the phases of the moon. The angled yellow support beam (part 77107) is part of the mechanism that rotates the moon in an inclined plane and proved difficult to hide, but in the end it looks quite good and the yellow color works nicely as a subtle nod to the sun .