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People across the United States will be watching the sky on Monday to see a total solar eclipse. Other people will be listening.
And for the Harvard University astronomers working to convert the rare sight into sound, the eclipse should create a symphony.
“We mapped the bright sunlight to the sound of a flute,” said Allyson Bieryla, an astronomer at Harvard. “Then it goes to midrange, which is clarinet, and then during the fullness, it goes down to a low clicking sound, and that click slows down even during the fullness.”
The scientists designed a box device – slightly larger than a mobile phone – that converts light into audible tones in a process called sonification. The sounds change based on the intensity of the light, allowing people with blindness or low vision to follow the progress of the eclipse.
The device is called LightSound, and there will be hundreds of them at eclipse viewing events on Monday.
“That image of wholeness is great so it’s visual, but that’s not the only way you can interpret or experience things,” said Bieryla, who runs the LightSound Project. “And for someone without sight, they need another sense to experience it.”
Convert light to sound
The idea for LightSound was born during the last total eclipse in the United States in 2017. Bieryla started the project with astronomer Wanda Díaz-Merced, who has experienced blindness and relies on similar technology to support her research. do. They created three prototypes – one in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and two in Kentucky.
The current version of LightSound is the result of some tweaks and refinement from those prototypes, but sonification has always been at its core. The device uses a light sensor to take data — in the case of an eclipse the data is light intensity, Bieryla said. Then those numbers, the light intensity values, the sound of an instrument are assigned using a MIDI synthesizer board in the device, she said. This allows the tones to change as the moon blocks the sun and the Earth becomes dark, so blind people can interact with the eclipse in ways they couldn’t before.
Fast forward to 2024, and the project has grown. Changes after the 2019 and 2020 total solar eclipses in South America, such as using a printed circuit board mainly instead of wires, made the device easier to build. With the help of local communities, the project was able to increase production quickly, Bieryla said. The LightSound team run workshops where anyone can learn how to assemble a device.
“Instead of producing 20 a day, we were producing 200 a day, so it was a huge improvement,” said Bieryla, stressing that the community aspect “is what made the this project.”
She said they built and distributed about 900 devices for the 2024 eclipse, which went to sites in Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Of the hundreds scattered across the United States, 29 devices were sent to Ohio state parks and wildlife areas in the path of totality. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources partnered with Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities, or OOD, to provide LightSound to dozens of eclipse watch parties.
Bernadetta King, program manager at the OOD’s Bureau of Disability Services, said people are excited to be fully included at eclipse events – not in a specific place but immersed with everyone else because the organizers of the events putting the device into speakers.
“Sometimes when you make something better for people with disabilities, you inadvertently make it better for everyone, so why don’t we think that way first?” Said the King. “Even the people who would be watching the eclipse through glasses are hearing about this and saying, ‘Oh, this is amazing.'”
King, who is also blind, said she feels that people with visual impairments are often not alert. Devices like the LightSound could also be an opportunity to push sonification technology in other ways, she said.
“This is kind of a foot in the door to open up an area that hasn’t traditionally been considered when you think about people with blindness and visual impairment,” King said, citing previous applications of sonification in weather, space and other scientific fields. .
Other comprehensive eclipse efforts
If you’re not near an eclipse event featuring LightSound, the American Council of the Blind is hosting a virtual stream of audio from various devices along the path of totality.
Another resource for the visually impaired is the Eclipse Soundscapes app. The project, part of NASA’s Citizen Science initiative, will collect multi-sensory observations and recordings from people across the country.
In the app, there is a tool that uses vibrations and audio tones to indicate each phase of the eclipse as well as spoken descriptions. The project said the instrument is “designed to hear and feel astronomical phenomena.”
In addition, NASA partnered with the National Park Service and Earth to Sky on activities, including a webinar series to prepare interpreters for the event. National parks involved in the partnership will have features for “blind and visually impaired people, neurodiverse children, people with physical impairments, and those with hearing impairments” at watch parties across the country, the space agency said. .
For Bieryla and her team, there is always another eclipse somewhere. Once this one is over, they’ll send LightSounds to the next location. As her small team is unable to build devices for the entire world, the next goal is to teach people around the globe how to run workshops. She said she hopes initiatives like LightSound will inspire young scientists.
“I’m hoping there’s a blind kid who could experience this device and say, ‘I want to do astronomy,'” Bieryla said, “and we need to have those resources for that student to succeed.”
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