Scientists Develop Planetarium for the Blind

June 22, 2001 -- What does a star feel like?

Since nearly all astronomical knowledge is based on light — somethingthat is seen, not touched — that can seem an impossible question.

But for the more than 10 million visually impaired people in the UnitedStates, seeing stars and planets and other objects in the night skyisn't possible.

In recent years, however, a few devices — tactile maps,books and one small-scale planetarium — have emerged to help the blindgain a sense of their cosmic surroundings.

Hubble by Touch

The most recent and, some argue, most advanced guide yet will becomeavailable later this summer. The book, Touch the Universe: A NASABraille Book of Astronomy, features plastic, molded pages overlayingcolor photographs that allow reading fingers to feel the details ofplanets, nebulae and galaxies as seen by Hubble, NASA's 11-year-oldorbiting space telescope.

The 87-page book was the brainchild of Bernhard Beck-Winchatz, aNASA-funded astronomer at DePaul University in Chicago. Beck-Winchatzgot the idea while browsing a museum bookstore where he noticed Touchthe Stars, a 1990 tactile astronomy book based on hand-drawnillustrations by Connecticut astronomer Noreen Grice.

"I thought the book was good, but also sad since she had only usedhand-drawn sketches of the universe," he says. "Now there are so manyreal images available from Hubble."

After acquiring a NASA grant, Beck-Winchatz recruited Grice to work onconverting selected Hubble images for the blind. Using a series of metalcarving tools, Grice traced the images onto hard plastic and thenaluminum plates at her kitchen table. She then placed the metal platesin a heat vacuum machine to mold multiple copies of molded plasticpages.

Most challenging, she says, was making the complex, colorful images intosomething simple enough to understand by touch.

"Hubble captures so much detail that if I put it all in, it would betoo confusing," she says.

Codes for Colors, Matter

Grice not only tried to represent the outlines of quasars and planetsand stars, she also used codes to signify color and matter. Tightlypacked parallel lines, for example, convey blue and crisscrossed linessignify red. Wavy lines represent gas currents and dots make up stars.A page of Braille text beside each picture explains the symbols.

"Sometimes we had dilemmas because we could only choose one feature toillustrate — we couldn't show something was both red and a gas," saysBeck-Winchatz.

To make sure her illustrations were clear, Grice sent prototypes tosight-impaired students at the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blindin Colorado Springs. Benning Wentworth, an astronomy teacher for theblind, says his students were shocked that someone had taken the time tocreate and then test the tactile images with the seventh- to 12th-graders.

"There is very little out there now for blind students," Wentworth says."But everything makes a big difference because it's one thing todescribe images to kids, but it's another to give them an opportunity tofeel them."

Wentworth, himself, recently helped build what he believes is the onlytactile planetarium in the country.

A Planetarium of Plastic, Metal

Wentworth and others used 7-foot-high dome plastic tents and melted in carefully placed and shaped metal nuts to represent the constellations, as they would appear at 9 p.m. during each of the four seasons. Puff paint — which dries inflated — between the metal nuts help guide fingertips from star to star.

Wentworth knows of only one other tactile astronomy guide available.South Carolina Space Grant has produced a large map with raised linesrepresenting the solar system, with all distances to scale.

It's distance, says Beck-Winchatz, that's hardest to convey to someonewho has never seen.

"For a blind person, someone standing 3 feet away is the same assomeone standing a universe away because distance is only as far as theycan reach," he says.

Books like the latest Touch the Universe and Grice's previous guide,raised maps and tactile planetariums convey the cosmos to scale and canhelp explain the vast expanses of the universe to the blind.

And, at least one student reports, stars can have a particular "feel."

Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind student Breanne (her teacherprefers not to reveal her last name) tested Grice's early prototypes,including the tactile illustration of the dying star that makes up theEskimo Nebula.

She said the dying star "feels just like a fried egg."