Ever looked in a sky full of stars and wondered what you were looking at? Where's the north star? Where's the Great Bear? Well, here's presenting - 'Starry Night' a great educational tool for Kids (and maybe adults) to learn about astronomy and electronic circuits [open and closed circuits] at the same time!

This project was inspired by Leah Buechley and Jie Qi's Computational Sketchbook at MIT. 'Starry Night' has one big huge circuit which has all the stars [blue LEDs] connected in parallel in this circuit. Once the moon's out [acts like a switch], all the stars shine thus activating the big circuit. By pressing on the names of different constellations, you see green lights between stars that help you identify the shape of the constellation. Each of the four constellations has a separate circuit with green LEDs to show the edges of the constellations.

To build this, you will need:

Lots of Copper Tape 3V coin cells [6] LEDs [about 60 LEDs were used in this project] Copper Foil [since its conductive both sides, it was used to activate switches] Long fingernails [optional but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - to help smooth the bumps while making a circuit or even to fold the copper tape while making sure its still conducting electricity] Soldering Iron

This instructable was made as part of the CS graduate course "Tangible Interactive Computing" at the University of Maryland, College Park taught by Professor Jon Froehlich. The course focused on exploring the materiality of interactive computing and, in the words of MIT Professor Hiroshii Ishii, sought to "seamlessly couple the dual worlds of bits and atoms." Please see http://cmsc838f-s14.wikispaces.com/ for more details.

This was done in collaboration with Hitesh Maidasani.