Virtual Space Walk for the Blind - Winter

 

This audio guide is my attempt to share the joy of visual observing with people who are totally blind, or nearly so, especially those who were never sighted. As such, it attempts to translate visual descriptions to tactile- so you can feel the sky virtually. I don’t know any other way to do this, and if I failed in the attempt, so be it. I would like to hear from anyone who listens to it and observes virtually using this guide, so as to improve the translation in potential future iterations.

I got the idea of a fabric sky dome from astrophysicist Paul Sutter, but I modified it a bit. I don’t like the idea of stars being like needles or pins sticking through the fabric of the sky dome because, frankly, I don’t think someone would want to run their hands over that, even in their minds. So my idea is that most stars feel more like the bristles of a brush or a closely cropped haircut or beard, which occurred to me because I just finished 12 weeks of chemo, and I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time running my hand over my newly bald head, feeling the little bristles that survived the purge.

This particular Space Walk is adapted from the Binocular Space Walk - Winter, and, aside from the translation from sight to touch, is the same. However, it doesn’t require the observer to go outside to find a dark site with a good horizon and a clear sky, but instead is a virtual experience. So I included a few of the night animal sounds that I often hear at the site where I regularly observe, because for me, half the fun is being out at night in the night creatures’ habitat, which I highly recommend anyway. In fact, I was just out observing last night and heard coyotes howling in the distance several times—a sound I love, as long as it’s not too close.

I describe the sky as it appears from a reasonably dark sky, in this case, at a longitude of about 40 degrees north, and with a sky of about 20.5 magnitudes per square arcsecond, which equates to a rural area within about 50 miles of a major metropolitan area, or about Bortle Class 5. Good, but not great, and pretty typical of the sky that most people can get to by driving an hour or two out of the big city.

Link to the mp3 audio file. Download the file to the device you will be using to listen to it. (This audio file is hosted on Google Drive. See Use a screen reader with Google Drive for help.)

Virtual Space Walk for the Blind - Winter - audio