The Astreos app, developed by OSeyeris, is designed to be used with a smartphone as an augmented reality app to allow people without sight the experience of looking at the night sky.

OSeyeris co-founder Yuma Antoine Decaux, who was blinded following an accident a decade ago, says he wants people without sight to be able to experience the “grandeur” of space.

“To be able to understand where the constellations are, it populates your imagination a bit more,” Mr Decaux said.

“We’ve used both sonification and haptic feedback, so sound and touch. So blind users can understand the shapes of constellations and feel the rings of Saturn, or a passing asteroid.”

Astreos is in beta testing and Mr Decaux said the developers had received good feedback so far, with a full rollout expected in the next month.

One of those who has tried it out is Karen Knight from Vision Australia. Blind from birth, Ms Knight said the app opened up a part of the universe she was not aware she was missing.

“I knew about the stars, I knew bits and pieces about them, but I had no idea where they were positioned in relation to each other, I’d never really thought about it,” she said.

“So it helped me develop a mental map of where they were, it was completely new information.”

Ms Knight said the app was a valuable tool for people who had been blind from birth like her but also for people who had lost their sight and still wanted to look to the stars.

“Particularly for people who have a deep interest in this area, if they’ve lost their sight they’ve had their interest cut off from them, but this opens that aspect back up to them,” she said.

Despite the focus on blind users, the app also includes intricate 3D visualisations of heavenly bodies, allowing people to see the stars in a new way.

The development team has been busy compiling mountains of astronomical data from sources around the world including NASA to ensure they have the most accurate star maps possible.

For the audio component, the team relies on information from a series of radio telescopes around the world, including one in Australia, which pick up the signals from stars that can be used to generate the haunting soundscape of the night sky.

An additional feature of the app which will be included when it is officially released will be a function to allow users to search sonically for exoplanets - planets outside Earth’s solar system.

Professional astronomers are interested in exoplanets because they are among the most likely places to find extraterrestrial life, however given the vastness of space they often rely on amateur astronomers to help them in the search.

Mr Decaux said the extra functionality in Astreos allowed vision-impaired astronomers to “see” things others might have missed.

“If your discovery is confirmed by scientists, it is actually given the name you decide as the discoverer,” he said.

“I believe blind people should be able to do that too.”

OSeyeris focuses on developing devices and applications for vision-impaired people, with many current options unwieldy, expensive or both.

Most recently the company developed a “smart” tape measure that allows people with vision impairments to make measurements accurately.