Sitting next to me here are what we call our Solar Stones,
and although we did not originally create the images
depicted on these tablets, we replicated them from
ancient petroglyphs down in Chaco Canyon National Park.
They were created around a thousand years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo people there.
So this over here
is the final version of our tablet.
And it is a depiction of what we believe is
a total solar eclipse around the year 1097.
And the reason we believe that is because
looking at this, it has all the telltale signs of an eclipse.
It has an occultation in the center
where the moon would be blotting out the sun, this very circular shape.
It has the solar corona out and along the sides
and up here on the top is what is believed to be a reflection of Venus.
While these tablets would be really good for any learner,
we collaborated with the Colorado School of the Blind so that
we could make
these tablets accessible to low vision learners.
Space is typically a very visual field.
You look up at the stars and you look at pictures of space.
But if you can't see that, then you're pretty much completely blocked out
from being able to study this and be able to understand this part of history.
So this way, we have an exhibit that people can learn from
if they are sighted or not sighted.
It took a lot of time to figure out how much detail we needed,
how deep the objects needed to be, what textures we needed to use.
A lot of these things that we didn't expect
we gained context through lots of user testing.
So I think this project is really valuable because it allows people
to interact with space in a completely different framework.
Every person has
something they can contribute to the study of space.
And so our hope is that not only can the blind and low vision community
be included in this part of history, but that sighted learners
can potentially learn things easier with a tactile experience.