Double~take | Blindness

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eriodically I get emails from the NASA website that give me the latest news in astronomy. On Wednesday, the story was called “Touch the Invisible Sky”.

NASA is funding a book for the blind, which depicts images from space supplied by space telescopes like Hubble or Chandra. Most people read books or watch TV and see those beautiful pictures of nebulae or galaxies, but imagine trying to describe it to someone who can’t see. Black background with a reddish haze in front, and a few scattered white dots? Yeah, real inspiring. So I think it’s an awesome idea to make a book to show blind people about space.

I bet everyone who reads this far is thinking this book is for someone else, seeing as we’re not blind, and have no problems reading this blog without Braille. And it’s true – the book uses tactile images, and is written in Braille and large type print. But here’s the really cool part: many of the images used in the book show the cosmos at wavelengths that no human eyes can see – like in infra-red, or ultraviolet.

“By showing these images, we remind readers that most of the universe and its beauty is hidden for all our eyes unless we use special telescopes,” says Doris Daou, co-author of the book. So for the purposes of this book, we’re all blind.

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into the world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (John 9:39-41 NIV)

Double~take appears every Saturday on theRubicon. Find past Double~take posts and a bio of Stephanie Hung here.

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