Fortifying his home against the awakening of the Force, a California contractor and his kids constructed a 23-foot Death Star and mounted it on their roof.

Or maybe it was merely a Halloween decoration. Whatever its true purpose, a two-story light-up replica of the planet-destroying space station from Star Wars is pretty amazing.

Colby Powell tells Make that the idea actually took root a couple of years ago after his children became interested in Star Wars. The original plan was to build an enormous Death Star in the back yard of their Lafayette, California, home, but later shifted to the roof.

As you might imagine -- and as the Galactic Empire well knows -- building a Death Star is no easy task, even on a smaller scale: While Powell and his family designed the 23-foot geodesic sphere using half-inch gray electrical conduit, the actual construction soon proved too large for the kids. That's when passersby -- about two dozen in all -- began to lend a hand, even if they weren't quite sure what they were building. And when it came time to place the Death Star on the roof? Powell called in a 70-foot crane.

He plans to leave the Death Star on the roof until sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. See more photos of the design and construction process at Make.