Touch the Universe: A NASA Braille book of astronomy by Noreen Grice, Joseph Henry Press, $35, ISBN 030908332X Reviewed by Mick O鈥橦are
TO MY great shame, this book came as a surprise. As a sighted person, I had unconsciously assumed that astronomy and the night sky were beyond the reach of people with impaired vision. Touch the Universe shows how wrong I was.
You can feel your way around the Universe, from Saturn鈥檚 rings to the Hubble Northern Deep Field, from Globular Cluster NGC 6093 to the Hubble Space Telescope. Using tactile illustrations combined with Braille captions, Noreen Grice, an astronomer from Boston University, presents the sky in a way I鈥檇 never envisaged. Sighted people should close their eyes to touch the Eagle Nebula. It will never seem the same again. This book doesn鈥檛 merely fill in gaps for people with impaired vision, it adds a new dimension for those of us who have already seen the phenomena depicted here. Galaxy Cluster Abell 2218 has a whole new meaning for me. New Scientist, sadly, is not published in a Braille version. Can I implore sighted people to tell their Braille-reading friends about this book?
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