We at Curascopium have been working to bring the fascination of space to people all over the world based on our philosophy of “communicating the wonder of space to the visually impaired and sharing the excitement with them. We recently held an astronomy workshop in collaboration with LightHouse in San Francisco. LightHouse is a non-profit organization that supports the visually and hearing impaired, and the strong collaboration between the two organizations made this event possible.

Background to Participation

Many Curascopium members are from or currently attending the University of California, Berkeley and maintain extensive networks in both Berkeley and San Francisco. We have been exchanging information for a long time, which led us to organize this event.

Event Details

The main focus of the event was a gaming event for the visually impaired, which included an astronomy workshop. Participants ranged from 9 years old to over 60 years old and came from diverse backgrounds. The workshop focused on four objects in the solar system - the Moon, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter - and the size and weight of each. Specific comparisons are as follows

• Size comparison : Moon : Earth : Mars : Jupiter = 1 : 4 : 2 : 45
• Weight comparison: Moon : Earth : Mars : Jupiter = 1 : 80 : 8 : 24000

For the size comparison, the Moon, Earth, and Mars were represented using paper mache, while Jupiter was represented using a large balloon.

Paper clay and oil clay were used for weights, and bowling balls were used for Jupiter, but there were some difficulties in expressing ideal weights, which will remain as an issue for the next time.

It was difficult to perfectly represent Jupiter, which is 24,000 times heavier than the moon, so it actually weighed one-fifth as much. Since we set the moon at 1 gram, Jupiter should have been set at 24 kilograms. However, the bowling ball we were able to prepare weighed 5 kilograms, and we had to verbally explain this to the participants.

The day of the event

On the day of the event, about 30 participants gathered and successfully deepened their understanding of the scale of the universe and the properties of celestial objects. We received many comments from the participants that they enjoyed the event, and we were able to conduct our first event in the U.S. in a fulfilling manner.

Future

We will continue to work with Lighthouse and plan to organize more events in the future, taking advantage of the lessons learned from this event. We will keep you updated on the progress of our activities.