Someone once observed that the moon is a harsh mistress. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep track of her, specially with this awesome moon phase clock that [G4lile0] designed and built.

It uses a 3D printed moon model combined with a series of LEDs to create the phases. These LEDs are driven by an Arduino that calculates the phase to show, as well as driving a small OLED display that shows the date and time. There is even a party mode for all of those lunar raves that you host.

[G4lile0] has done an excellent job of documenting the code that drives the lamp, so it would be easy to add features, or adapt this design to show the phases of another moon or add other features. It’s an excellent overall design, and kudos to [G4lile0] for doing it all with open source tools like FreeCAD.

If you were lucky enough to score passes to this year’s Burning Man, be sure to keep a look out for [Laurence Symonds] and crew, who are putting together an ambitious fixture for the event. In reality, we’re guessing you won’t have to look far to find their giant moon replica floating overhead – in fact it will probably be pretty hard to miss.

They are calling the sculpture “Lune and Tide”, which of an 8 meter wide internally lit moon which hovers over a spinning platform that’s just as big across. The inflatable sphere is made up of giant ripstop nylon panels which are home to 36,000-odd sewn-in LEDs. The LEDs illuminate the sphere to reflect the natural color of the moon, though with a simple command, [Laurence] and Co. can alter the lighting to their heart’s content.

If Hack a Day’s [Jesse Congdon] makes his way out to the festival again this year, we’ll be sure he gets some footage of Lune and Tide in action. For now, you’ll have to satisfy your curiosity by checking out the project’s build log.