I also once got distracted by Spirographs. We got a Spirograph kit for our kids one Christmas, so I spent some time during the holidays writing a python package to draw them. Nothing fancy, just uses python’s built-in turtle graphics.
Fascinating. The heliocentric view made me wonder: how are we going to cope, culturally, with Mars colonists when they are stuck on the other side of the sun for two weeks every two years?
The Red Mars books deal with the bonus half hour every night neatly, as a social phenomenon — Martian days are 24.5 hours long — but I don’t recall the solar occlusion coming up.
I knew that Venus mostly moves in one direction across the sky, but occasionally has "retrograde" movement where it temporarily moves "backwards". This spirograph model is a wonderful explanation of why that happens.
Whatching Apophis approach Earth is very interesting.
However, boo for not including Pluto even after including Ceres!!! /s
Love it! I'm fascinated by all things Spirograph and built my own digital version of the more traditional toy here: https://nathanfriend.com/inspiral-web