LED Fiber Optic Star Galaxy Ceiling

My wife and I (I did the work/she brought me beer and watched) decided to design and install an LED fiber optic ceiling for this project. If you look closely, you will see various, popular constellations, including Hercules, Cancer, Escorpious, Big & Little Dipper. It took me seven trips to the attic, hours at a time, but it finally got done. If you like what you see and are thinking of doing one for your own home, let me know and I can try to reply with instructions/advice once I find the time to make one. Thanks for watching!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Stars
• Ceiling
• Project
• Master Bedroom
• Constellations
• Fiber Optics
• LED.

[gbisaga]

Great job! Thanks for posting. I have a planning question. How did you get the star positions for the constellations up there? Did you drill from underneath? Also, how did you expand a small star plot out to the full size of the ceiling? I am putting in a 4'x8' panel, but the plot expansion problem still applies. Great song too!

[ziyadkahid928]

@gbisaga- Thanks for your compliments, gbisaga! To answer your first question, after going in our attic and removing the insulation, I began measuring the star points from a live constellation map (however, it took too much time so I just did certain constellations with random stars around them! LOL, but that worked out just fine!) Secondly, I drilled down from the top of the attic where I had placed the constellation points with a black permanent marker.

[ziyadkahid928]

@gbisaga- ....it would of been too difficult to find all the holes from the top of the attic if I had drilled upwards from the ceiling area. And as for your final question...like I said, originally, I wanted to do a real life representation of the stars on one given night, however it was way too time consuming so I gave up and just spaced out the CONSTELLATION stars. Hope this helps. Any questions are more than welcome. That's why I made the video...so others can enjoy! I am here to help!

[gbisaga]

@ziyadkahid928 Thank you for the clarifications. That makes a lot of sense. As long as I get the major constellations and planets, I guess I don't really care about the rest. One more question: did you sweat things like color or size? Some stars like Betelgeuse and Rigel are noticeably bigger than others even with the naked eye, and some, like Betelgeuse or Mars, have definite colors. I wonder if you could use two fibers in a hole for the biggies. Thanks again!

[ziyadkahid928]

@gbisaga- The LED fiber optic machine that I had purchased came with three different sized fibers. There are some machines that you can purchase different sizes fpr yourself, but I was happy with the different sizes on mine. And a far as the colors are concerned, I just took different color permament markers, and colored the larger sized strands (planets) so that they look different than the rest of the stars.

[nin29nin]

Looks really nice.

How many strands of fiber did you use and what is the size of you room?

[ziyadkahid928]

@nin29nin- The size of the bedroom ceiling in the video is 12x13 square feet. Unfortunately, the longest Fiber Optic stands that I purchased could not reach the far corners of the ceiling, but I fixed that problem by placing the "stars" farther away from each other in the far areas...this way it looks as if there are fewer stars visible in the far corners.

Also, I used the 288 Star LED Fiber Optic 3 Size product that I purchased from ebay...its a bit expensive (Around $270) but is worth it.

[nin29nin]

@ziyadkahid928 Thank you

[ziyadkahid928]

@lilmisspoledancers- As far as tips are concerned, I suggest doing the project during winter months (If you live in a hot weather state like Arizona) because even during the winter, my attic was hot!

Also, start from the corners of the ceiling first. This way, you get the hard part over with and don't trip on the fiber optic cables while your in the attic.

[lilmisspoledancers]

Thankyou so much for posting this vid,its the only 1 i've come across that shows fibre optic stars on a solid ceiling(one you cant take down to add stars too)

any tips you can give would be much appreciated :-D