Solar System Sonification: Exploring Earth and Its Neighbors through Sound

Informal learning environments (ILEs) like museums incorporate multi-modal displays into their exhibits as a way to engage a wider group of visitors, often relying on tactile, audio, and visual means to accomplish this. Planetariums, however, represent one type of ILE where a single, highly visual presentation modality is used to entertain, inform, and engage a large group of users in a passive viewing experience. Recently, auditory displays have been used as a supplement or even an alternative to visual presentation of as­ tronomy concepts, though there has been little evaluation of those displays. Here, we designed an auditory model of the solar sys­ tem and created a planetarium show, which was later presented at a local science center. Attendees evaluated the performance on helpfulness, interest, pleasantness, understandability, and relata­ bility of the sounds mappings. Overall, attendees rated the solar system and planetary details very highly, in addition to providing open-ended responses about their entire experience.