Touching the invisible

I am just unspeakably pleased about this. (Given my interests in astronomy and visual impairment — which must be the two things I've been interested in the longest — it's probably not surprising.)

"Touch the Invisible Sky" is a 60-page book with color images of nebulae, stars, galaxies and some of the telescopes that captured the original pictures. Each image is embossed with lines, bumps, and other textures. The raised patterns translate colors, shapes, and other intricate details of the cosmic objects, allowing visually impaired people to experience them.

It's in a series that started with Touch the Universe, which stemmed from someone running a planetarium show faced with blind kids who thought it "stunk." Rather than just shaking her head and being sad, she got the book made.

This new one is the fifth such book. The great thing about this one particularly, as pointed out by the Bad Astronomy blog where I found out about this, is

it’s created for people who are visually impaired, but it shows images from the invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum: infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays… light that none of us can see. In X-rays, we are all of us blind. We need very fancy and expensive telescopes to be able to detect this form of light from astronomical objects at all.

I'm so glad that one kind of blindness need be no more hindrance than another.

I demand a more aesthetically appealing media reaction to extraterrestrials!

Man, I almost hope this isn't true because it pains me to think of the onslaught of really, really stupid headlines like that.

Okay, I did say almost.

Sure, it's probably nothing. At this stage, it's the flimsiest of rumors. (While I've seen this mentioned on a few blogs now, they're all linking to this one random California* TV station website, which doesn't seem like the best authority.) I'm sure it's nothing.

But I don't know, do I? And neither do you. And that's fun, while it lasts.

Edit: Well, now we know (thanks drjon).

* California! I bet the aliens won't even find any cows there. Just tofu.