Bell3D: An Audio-based Astronomy Education System for Visually-impaired Students

摘要

This article presents a software system that allows astronomical data to be represented and analysed purely through sound. The goal is to use this for communicating astronomy to visually impaired students, as well as providing a new modality of astronomy experience for those who are sighted. The programme — known as Bell3D and developed at the University of Aberdeen — allows various stars to be selected from a database and then maps a variety of their astronomical parameters to audio parameters so that they can be analysed, compared and understood, solely through the medium of sound.