English: Reconstruction of a working Grand Orrery in front of Joseph Wright of Derby's c.1766 painting of 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery'. The reproduction of the orrery was commissioned by Nick Moyes of Derby Museums in 1993, from orrery-maker, John Gleave of Hebden Bridge. It cost £10,000, and involved the preliminary construction of a half-scale working model. After its unveiling in 1995, Mr Gleave commented that, had he known the amount of effort that its construction would take, he would have charged double that sum.
The replica grand orrery was built to help interpret Joseph Wright's painting of an orrery, and was timed to mark the return of many of Joseph Wright's paintings from a major world tour of art galleries in London, Paris and New York. The reproduction grand orrery was unveiled at a special ceremony and meal attended by John Gleave, Sir Neil Cossons (then Director of the Science Museum, London) and museum staff.
The model can be operated manually (with a removable handle), but is normally operated via an electric motor which visitors to the museum could operate for themselves. In normal use, a perspex dome prevented visitors from being able to touch the moving parts.
Show here, from left to right, are Jupiter, Venus, the Sun, Earth and Moon, Saturn and Mars. (Mercury is mostly obscured behind Venus)
As at 2023, the mechanical grand orrery and Wright's painting are both on display together at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, England.