It’s not Christmas until your tree is topped with a glowing Rhombicosidodecahedron

I’ve slowly become obsessed with Snapology and now see origami spheres as the unnecessary solution to already solved problems.

Snapology origami tree topper with LEDs powered by the Raspberry Pi Pico

I have seen how pleasing the throw of light can be from light sources placed inside Snapology origami, so when thoughts turned to Christmas decorations the idea of a Snapology tree topper seemed to almost float up from my subconscious.

My sunrise lamp combines Snapology with a Raspberry Pi powered NeoPixel LED ring to create beautiful patterns on the ceiling.

I thought I’d keep my tree topper simple and use far fewer pieces than I had with my previous models. There is a whole world of complex polyhedral shapes with names almost too silly to be real, but I settled on a rhombicosidodecahedron (named not by Lewis Carol but Johannes Kepler). They have 30 square, 20 triangular and 12 pentagonal faces.