In this work, we describe a theoretical and experimental activity to undergraduate as well high school students aiming to apply physical and mathematical concepts to the experimental setup of a three-dimensional maquette of the Southern Cross constellation. The apparatus is built with moderate cost materials like white LEDs adapted to potentiomenters to brightness tuning. The basic concepts involved are positional astronomy, coordinate transformations, as well elementary geometry and trigonometry. In this paper, some aspects of the activity making are discussed and a list of the used materials is presented. Some pictures of the obtained results are also shown.
positional astronomy; maquette; constellation; coordinate transformations
