Make This Giant LED Lit Moon With Simple Tools

Source: Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers

I love the moon. Like most folks, I take it for granted most of the time, but occasionally I am reminded that it is a giant freaking rock that is orbiting us about 240,000 miles away. I’m not sure why, but I find it fascinating.

I wanted to bring a bit of the beauty of the moon into my home, but like usual, I had to make it into some kind of big impressive item.

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My first thoughts jumped right to the giant CNC router I have access to, I also considered 3d printing this in multiple parts and assembling it into a massive structure.

After some consideration, I ultimately decided I was going to challenge myself to do this low-tech. I didn’t want to use tools that many people don’t have within their reach. In the end, you could pull off this whole thing with only a hand saw, a staple gun, and a pair of scissors.

Idea

I wanted a giant moon. High resolution and back lit, and I didn’t want it to take up a bunch of room, so it had to be pretty flat. I’ve got really high ceilings in my living room, so I knew I could go huge without it feeling weird and claustrophobic.

The print

I hunted for high resolution images of the moon, and found plenty. Then I moved on to getting a custom print. After a few calls to sign shops it turned out that I was going to be paying over $200 for a 6 foot wide,, high resolution print of the moon on plastic I could back light. That just seemed wrong to me, there had to be a better way.

I considered projecting an image of the moon onto a vinyl shower curtain, painting the craters, then stretching that over a frame. During this brainstorming session, it hit me… I wonder if there are already shower curtains out there with high resolution images of the moon on them? Sort of.

Here are the 2 shower curtains I found. They were roughly $30 each. The resolution isn’t as high as I’d like, but from a few feet away, you’d never know. The larger moon on the left is somewhat elongated and overlaps with the grommets at the top. Despite that, I decided to use the larger just for the impressive size. The smaller one may get finished and placed into a classroom in the near future.

I also purchased some cheap frosted vinyl shower curtains to act as diffusers.

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