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People in the United States will look to the sky on Monday to witness a total solar eclipse. Others will listen to it.
And for Harvard University astronomers working to translate the rare sight into sound, the eclipse should create a symphony.
“We mapped the sun’s bright light as a whistle sound,” says Allyson Bieryla, an astronomer at Harvard. “Then it goes to a midrange, which is a clarinet, and during totality it goes to a low clicking sound, and that clicking actually slows down during totality.”
The scientists designed a boxy 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 hundreds of them will be at eclipse viewing events on Monday.
“That image of the totality is breathtaking and therefore visual, but that does not mean that it is the only way you can interpret or experience things,” says Bieryla, who leads the LightSound Project. “And for someone without sight, he needs another sense to experience it.”
Converting light into sound
The idea for LightSound emerged during the last total solar eclipse in the United States in 2017. Bieryla started the project with astronomer Wanda Díaz-Merced, who experiences blindness and relies on similar technology for her research. They created three prototypes: one in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and two in Kentucky.
The current version of LightSound is the result of some adjustments and refinements since those prototypes, but sonification has always been at the heart of it. The device uses a light sensor to record data — in the case of a solar eclipse, the data is light intensity, Bieryla said. Those numbers, the light intensity values, are then assigned an instrument sound 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 darkens, allowing people with blindness to interact with the eclipse in ways that were not possible before.
Fast forward to 2024 and the project has grown. Changes after the 2019 and 2020 total solar eclipses in South America, such as primarily using a circuit board instead of wires, made the device easier to build. With the help of local communities, the project was able to quickly scale up production, Bieryla said. The LightSound team provides workshops in which anyone can learn how to assemble a device.
“Instead of producing 20 a day, we produced 200 a day, so it was a huge, huge improvement,” Bieryla said, emphasizing that the community element “is what made this project successful.”
She said they built and distributed about 900 devices for the 2024 eclipse, which went to locations in Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Of those hundreds spread across the United States, 29 devices have been sent to state parks and wildlife areas in Ohio that are 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-watching parties.
Bernadetta King, program manager at the OOD’s Bureau of Services for the Visually Impaired, said people are excited to be fully involved in eclipse events — not in a separate place, but immersed in everyone else as event organizers set up the device. connect speakers.
“When you make something better for people with disabilities, you sometimes inadvertently make it better for everyone, so why don’t we just think about it that way?” said King. “Even the people who would watch the eclipse through glasses hear about this and say, ‘Oh, this is cool.'”
King, who also struggles with blindness, said she feels that people with visual impairments are not often at the top of the agenda. Devices like the LightSound could also be an opportunity to continue pushing 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 thought of when you think about people who are blind or visually impaired,” King said, citing previous applications of sonification in weather, space and mentioned other scientific areas.
Other inclusive eclipse efforts
If you’re not near an eclipse event with LightSound, the American Council of the Blind hosts a virtual stream of sound from various devices along the path of totality.
The Eclipse Soundscapes app is another resource for people with visual impairments. The project, part of NASA’s Citizen Science initiative, will collect multisensory observations and recordings from people across the country.
Within the app there is a tool that uses vibrations and audio tones to convey each phase of the eclipse in addition to spoken descriptions. The project said the tool is “designed so that you can hear and feel astronomical phenomena.”
In addition, NASA collaborated 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 elements for “the visually impaired, neurodivergent children, the physically challenged and those with hearing impairments” at watch parties across the country, the space agency said.
As for Bieryla and her team, there’s always another solar eclipse somewhere. Once this is over, they send LightSounds to the next location. Since her small team can’t build devices for the entire world, the next goal is to teach people around the world how to host workshops. She said she hopes initiatives like LightSound will inspire young scientists.
“I hope that there is a blind child who might experience this device and say, ‘I want to do astronomy,’” Bieryla said, “and we need to have those resources so that student can be successful.”
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