At the Science Museum in London you can take your pick from some amazing space-centric exhibits. For example, you may be familiar with an orrery. Even if you aren’t familiar with the word, you’ve likely seen one. An orrery made by a the space owl Kh’ymm can be found in the Star Wars show Skeleton Crew, and there’s an aswesome orrery that belongs to Aughra in The Dark Crystal. An orrery is a mechanical model of a system of celestial objects. And it’s called an orrery because the first moden orrey was made by John Rowley, who named it for his patron, the Earl of Orrery. Jorhn Rowley’s orrery currently resides at the Science Museum. Here’s more from London’s Science Museum:

…on the second floor you’ll come across another piece of history – the original orrery that was made for the Earl of Orrery by London instrument maker John Rowley in 1712.

This planetary model was originally a demonstration device used to show the motions of the Earth and Moon around the Sun. Models like this became popular during the seventeenth century especially after Sir Isaac Newton published his theory of gravity.

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