An Accessible Solar Eclipse!?
“[The blind] community has been traditionally left out of astronomy and astrophysics, and I think that that is a glaring omission that it’s time to answer.” - Solar astrophysicist Henry “Trae” Winter
“A “rumble map” allows users to hear and feel the phenomena when they touch photos of previous eclipses.
Dark areas in the photos, like the solid black face of the moon, are silent when you touch them. Wispy strands of sunlight radiating out from behind the moon emit lower hums. And touching brighter areas, like the shards of light that peek out from behind the moon’s valleys, produce higher frequencies.
The sounds are paired with vibrations, soft for darker areas and more intense for brighter spots.
“We managed to create frequencies that resonate with the body of the phone,” said the app’s audio engineer Miles Gordon, “so the phone is vibrating entirely using the ”
“On August 21, 2017, millions of people will view a total solar eclipse as it passes through the United States. However, for the visually impaired, or others who are unable to see the eclipse with their own eyes, the Eclipse Soundscapes Project delivers a multisensory experience of this exciting celestial event. The project, from NASA’s Heliophysics Education Consortium, will include audio descriptions of the eclipse in real time, recordings of the changing environmental sounds during the eclipse, and an interactive “rumble map” app that will allow users to visualize the eclipse through touch.”