Model

A London-based team has created a unique model for people keen to track the Moon's cycle. MOON is a 3D lunar model fitted with a rotating LED arm that mimics the Sun's position, allowing you to watch the Moon wax and wane on your coffee table.

NASA has released a browser-based application that allows citizen scientists to explore the surface of the asteroid Vesta. The 3D model was created from data harvested by the agency's Dawn spacecraft over the course of its year-long stay in orbit around the asteroid.

Today, Venice is regarded as one of the prettiest cities in the world. If you've ever wondered what it looked like in the past, however, an ambitious project may soon be able to show you. Venice Time Machine wants to digitize the city's vast archive and create a 1,000-year evolving model of it.

A fresh analysis of data collected by NASA's WISE telescope has cast doubt on the widely accepted unified model for the composition of black holes. The study examined 170,000 supermassive black holes, and will require scientists to present new theories on the structure of these stellar giants.

Chances are one of the materials up for consideration in building the International Space Station was not matchsticks. But for one Iowa artist the idea of using 282,000 matchsticks and gallons of glue to hand-build a scale model of the ISS seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea.

There are a number of companies that offer to print 3D figurines in your likeness, however they require a visit to their location for a scan. Shapify has launched a service that lets users scan themselves at home, using a Kinect.

Taking the title of the world’s largest Lego model is a 1:1 scale replica of an X-Wing made up of 5,335,200 Lego bricks and taking 32 Lego master builders 17,336 hours (around four months) to complete.

Eighty Danish Lego devotees got together on May 10 and 11 to help one Henrik Ludvigsen with his plan to build the world's longest plastic toy train track.

Though it may bring to mind a Star Wars starfighter model, or perhaps a top-secret military jet concept, the futuristic-looking MusicMachine by Reuge and MB&F is in fact a fully-functional music box.

Microsoft is set to make life easier for graphic artists, 3D printing aficionados, industrial designers, animators, architects, and games developers by turning its Kinect sensor to the task of generating 3D models of objects and environments.

Researchers at Penn state have developed a new method for calculating the habitable zone around exoplanets.

Take a few head shots, line them up using a simple online tool, and presto – you can assemble a paper model of your very own head.