[bksvol-discuss] OT: NASA Unveils Cosmic Images Book in Braille for Blind Readers
- From: Carrie Karnos <ckarnos@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Bookshare Vol Group <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:24:33 -0800 (PST)
Since this is available through the NFB and other sources, and because the
pages have different textures, it doesn't look like a good candidate for
Bookshare, but I thought that some people might be interested in it. If anyone
does get it, please let me know what you think. (I'm a big astronomy buff).
Just an FYI, Carrie
----- Forwarded Message ----
NASA UNVEILS COSMIC IMAGES BOOK IN BRAILLE FOR BLIND READERS
BALTIMORE - At a Tuesday ceremony at the National Federation of the
Blind, NASA unveiled a new book that brings majestic images taken by
its Great Observatories to the fingertips of the blind.
"Touch the Invisible Sky" is a 60-page book with color images of
nebulae, stars, galaxies and some of the telescopes that captured the
original pictures. Each image is embossed with lines, bumps and other
textures. These raised patterns translate colors, shapes and other
intricate details of the cosmic objects, allowing visually impaired
people to experience them. Braille and large-print descriptions
accompany each of the book's 28 photographs, making the book's design
accessible to readers of all visual abilities.
The book contains spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope,
Chandra X-ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope and powerful
ground-based telescopes. The celestial objects are presented as they
appear through visible-light telescopes and different spectral
regions invisible to the naked eye, from radio to infrared, visible,
ultraviolet and X-ray light.
The book introduces the concept of light and the spectrum and explains
how the different observatories complement each others' findings.
Readers take a cosmic journey beginning with images of the sun, and
travel out into the galaxy to visit relics of exploding and dying
stars, as well as the Whirlpool galaxy and colliding Antennae
galaxies.
"Touch the Invisible Sky" was written by astronomy educator and
accessibility specialist Noreen Grice of You Can Do Astronomy LLC and
the Museum of Science, Boston, with authors Simon Steel, an
astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
Cambridge, Mass., and Doris Daou, an astronomer at NASA Headquarters,
Washington.
"About 10 million visually impaired people live in the United States,"
Grice said. "I hope this book will be a unique resource for people
who are sighted or blind to better understand the part of the
universe that is invisible to all of us."
The book will be available to the public through a wide variety of
sources, including NASA libraries, the National Federation of the
Blind, Library of Congress repositories, schools for the blind,
libraries, museums, science centers and Ozone Publishing.
"We wanted to show that the beauty and complexity of the universe goes
far beyond what we can see with our eyes!" Daou said.
"The study of the universe is a detective story, a cosmic 'CSI,' where
clues to the inner workings of the universe are revealed by the
amazing technology of modern telescopes," Steel said. "This book
invites everyone to join in the quest to unlock the secrets of the
cosmos."
"One of the greatest challenges faced by blind students who are
interested in scientific study is that certain kinds of information
are not available to them in a non-visual form," said Marc Maurer,
president of the National Federation of the Blind. "Books like this
one are an invaluable resource because they allow the blind access to
information that is normally presented through visual observation and
media. Given access to this information, blind students can study and
compete in scientific fields as well as their sighted peers."
The prototype for this book was funded by an education grant from the
Chandra mission and production was a collaborative effort by the NASA
space science missions, which provide the images, and other agency
sources.
For more information on NASA's Great Observatories, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
-end-
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