Solar Powered Telescope

The Solar Powered Telescope is a marvel of Steampunk technology, totally self sufficient by means of solar power. Scaled to real life, it towers over 90 feet in height. It is a solar collector by day and an electronic telescope by night. It’s able to spin and rotate in all directions in order to capture everything above the horizon.The lower base section is the battery storage unit and all the machinery needed to operate the solar collector and telescope. It’s equipped with a lighting rod tower that not only attracts lightning bolts away from the telescope, but it absorbs the lightning strikes and stores the power in high capacity storage cells. An elevator is used to bring the star gazers and equipment up to the upper portion of this structure. For the record, the gear, chain, and axle work on this piece was one of the most challenging jobs I’ve had to face so far. Coordinating 4 gears, 2 chains, and an axle rod by hand is a bit more complicated than manufacturing and assembling 2 gear sprockets and 1 chain on a bike. I actually had to design and make chain tensioners to deal with chain slack. If it wasn’t so much fun I would be complaining.