During the years 1774 – 1781 Eise Eisinga constructed his planetarium in the ceiling of his living room in Franeker, Friesland (the Netherlands) It shows the solar system as it was then known, amd it is still in function. After a thorough study this 3D model was built. To maximise visibility of the mechanism, the house and supporting parts of the construcion have been left out.
The planetarium is driven by a clockmechanism. In this animation the clock runs in realtime.
The “central axis”is driven directly by the clockmechanism. This axis drives all further parts of the planetarium.
Normally only the movement of the clockmechanism can be clearly seen. The mechanism must slow down the speed of the clock significantly to give the planets the right orbit time. The Earth’s orbit around the sun takes one year, Saturn’s orbit takes 29 years. In this animation the mechanism’s speed is accelerated with a factor 10 from 1 to 1.000 000. Only at a very high speed the movement of (almost) all parts can be seen.
