How a team of scientists is helping people hear solar eclipses instead of seeing them

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People across the United States will look to the skies on Monday to witness a total solar eclipse. Others will hear it too.

And for Harvard astronomers working to translate unusual sights into sound, the eclipse should produce a symphony.

“We mapped the sun’s bright light to the sound of a flute,” said Harvard University astronomer Alison Vierilla. “Then it moves into the midrange, the clarinet, and then it becomes like a low click during the totality, and even that click slows down during the totality.”

Scientists have designed a box-shaped device, slightly larger than a mobile phone, that converts light into audible sound through a process called sonication. The sound changes depending on the intensity of the light, allowing people who are blind or visually impaired to track the progress of the solar eclipse.

The device is called “LightSound,” and hundreds of them are expected to participate in the solar eclipse viewing event on Monday.

“Images of wholeness are breathtaking and visual, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only way things can be interpreted or experienced,” says Vierilla, who runs the Light Sound Project he says. “And for people who are blind, it takes a different sense to experience that.”

The idea for LightSound was born during the last total solar eclipse in the United States in 2017. Vierilla started the project with Wanda Díaz Merced, an astronomer who has experienced blindness and works with similar technology. They built three prototypes of her (one in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and two in Kentucky).

The current version of LightSound is the result of several tweaks and tweaks since those prototypes, but sonification has always been at its heart. The device uses light sensors to capture data. In the case of solar eclipses, the data is the intensity of the light, Vierilla said. These numbers, or light intensity values, are assigned to instrument sounds using her MIDI synthesizer board within the device, she said. This will also allow people with visual impairments to interact with the eclipse in ways they weren’t able to before, as the tones change as the moon blocks the sun and the Earth darkens.

Fast forward to 2024 and the project has grown. Changes after the 2019 and 2020 total solar eclipses in South America made it easier to build the device, primarily using printed circuit boards instead of wires. With the help of the local community, the project was able to quickly scale up production, Vierilla said. The LightSound team hosts workshops where anyone can learn how to assemble the device.

“Instead of producing 20 pieces a day, we were producing 200 pieces a day. That was a huge improvement,” Bieryla said, adding that the community element “was instrumental in making this project a success.” ” he emphasized.

She said they built and distributed about 900 devices for the 2024 eclipse to sites in Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Of the hundreds of devices scattered across the United States, 29 were sent to state parks and wildlife refuges in Ohio, where the virus is in the midst of a full-blown outbreak. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources partnered with Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (OOD) to provide his LightSound to dozens of eclipse viewing parties.

Bernadette King, program manager for OOD’s Office of Visually Impaired Services, said people were excited to be able to fully participate in the eclipse event. The event organizer connects your device to the speaker, so you can participate with everyone else instead of in a separate location.

“When we make something better for people with disabilities, we can inadvertently make it better for everyone, so why not start thinking about it that way from the beginning?” King said. Told. “Even people who would have been looking at the eclipse through glasses hear about this and say, ‘Oh, this is cool.'”

Ms King, who has experienced visual impairment herself, said she felt people with vision-related disabilities were not often considered. Devices like LightSound could also be an opportunity to continue pushing sonification technology forward in other ways, she said.

“This is kind of a stepping stone to opening up areas that haven’t been considered before when we think about people with blindness and visual impairments,” King said. This article touched on past applications of sonication in the scientific field.

If you’re not near an eclipse event with light sounds, the American Foundation for the Blind is hosting a virtual stream of sounds from various devices along the way.

The Eclipse Soundscapes app is another resource for people who are visually impaired. This project is part of NASA’s Citizen Science Initiative, which collects multisensory observations and recordings from people across the country.

In addition to narrated instructions, the app has tools that use vibrations and audio to communicate each phase of the eclipse. According to the project, the tool is “designed to help you hear and feel astronomical phenomena.”

Additionally, NASA partners with the National Park Service and Earth to Sky on activities such as a webinar series to prepare interpreters for events. National parks participating in the partnership will include elements for “blind, neurodivergent, physically disabled, and hearing impaired” watch parties across the country, the space agency said. Ta.

When it comes to Bierilla and her team, there’s always another eclipse somewhere. Once this event is over, we plan to ship LightSounds to the following locations: Her small team can’t build devices for the entire world, so her next goal is to teach people around the world how to run workshops. She said she hopes initiatives like LightSound will inspire young scientists.

“We hope that some visually impaired child will experience this device and say, “I want to do astronomy,” and in order for that student to be successful, we need to have those resources in place,” Vierilla said. he said.

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