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>> For whatever reason it feels
great to touch it.

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>> I don't know how it really
looks, but it feels like

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>> 'oh this is what I thought a
nebula would be like.'

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>> I was born with Congenital
cataracts, so what that

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>> means is I had an opaque film
over both of my eyes

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>> when I was born. What that
resulted in is very blurry

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>> vision, blurry images, I
don't have any sense of detail.

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>> As a blind child, there
weren't a lot of accessible
materials

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>> readily available to me as a
youngster who was already

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>> interested in science. It was
something that we would take

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>> styrofoam balls or cups and
kind of make the planets,

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>> a very rudimentary concept of
what the planets look like.

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>> But when it came to looking
at an image from a textbook,

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>> that was something that I
didn't have access to.

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>> All of these were words and
concepts I couldn't physically

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>> grasp on my own, to
experience it for myself.

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>> As a blind student, I'm
wondering, 'can I get just as

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>> excited as everyone else?'

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>> This book is entitled 'Touch
the Universe' a NASA Braille book
of astronomy.

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>> by Noreen Grice.

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>> Which took Hubble, and the
images that came from Hubble,

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>> and created a source of
really powerful information of

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>> what a telescope looks like?
What does a nebula look like?

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>> What do, even our stars, what
do they look like?

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>> But with the book it actually
came to life.

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>> It created a sense, an actual
understanding of what these

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>> science concepts that you're
learning in school? You can

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>> actually learn this from a
book as well.

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>> One of the images that was
captured with Hubble is Jupiter.

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>> So on this page we have the
outline of the planet itself,

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>> we also have the gas rings
that are at various points of

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>> the planet itself. But we
also have the Great Red Spot.

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>> And so with touch I can
actually tell it's not a
horizontal

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>> view, it's actually at an
angle. So again, through these
images

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>> from Hubble I get a better
understanding of what my
classmates,

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>> what my friends are looking
at when they go to museums and

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>> it does allow me to question
and say 'well why does this

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>> planet tilt in the way that
it does?

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>> There is a star within the
center of it. And almost

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>> just like a number eight it's
expanded out from its
hemisphere,

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>> again, as a young kid, and
you hear the word 'nebula'

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>> it's kind of equated to
'nebulous' and you think oh
there's

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>> chaos, it's just a bunch of
stars. But to see through this
image

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>> that a nebula can have a
certain order to it, a beautiful
order

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>> to it, then this hourglass
nebula shows that indeed is what
it looks like.

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>> Almost like our Milky Way, it
actually spirals out with almost

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>> three? Almost three legs that
spiral out and it's almost like

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>> you wanna grab it and you
almost spin it.

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>> And that's actually what the
galaxy is doing, is spinning.

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>> So it's kinda cool. It either
feels almost like a

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>> spider, with legs, but you
know that it's a galaxy in
space.

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>> I felt like I was back in
fifth or sixth grade and
reliving that experience

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>> of the launch of Hubble and
actually getting a chance to say

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>> 'hey, now I have this access,
now I can experience this
excitement for myself.

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>> It kind of made me feel like
a kid again to be able to say

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>> 'Oh this is what a star looks
like, or this is what a
telescope looks like,

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>> or this is what our planets
look like.

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>> Because for such a long time
I didn't know.

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