U of T astrophysicist-musician helps blind, partially sighted experience the cosmos with musical planetarium show

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"It's kind of like there's an electric guitar in space and I'm plugging in the cable" - UofT Music alumnus Matt Russo


Myth, a painting by Robyn Rennie

Robyn Rennie hasn’t seen the night sky for almost 13 years.

She has centrocecal vision loss, a condition that stemmed from an illness, leaving her with only peripheral vision and a loonie-sized area of vision at the centre.

“When I'm looking at the normal night sky, I'll see something at the corner of my eye twinkling but when I turn to look at it directly, I can't see it anymore,” she says.

She says she misses being able to spot Orion from the window of her Orillia home. She used to find it constant and comforting.

Wanting to help her mother relive that experience, Rennie’s daughter Erin decided to contact University of Toronto’s planetarium to see if there was something they could do.

She came to the right place.

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