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Clara Sayffaerth, Jennifer Meiler, Crystal McArdle-Ventura, Atakan Çoban, Christoph Hoyer, Florian Mueller, Arno Riffeser, Jochen Kuhn, Albrecht Schmidt
Stars Without Steps: Bridging Observatory Access Based on Physical Proximity Through Educational XR
Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26), April 13--17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain (bib)

Remote research facilities such as mountain observatories offer unique scientific and educational value, yet their physical inaccessibility limits participation for many audiences. This paper presents a location-independent, mobile Extended Reality (XR) application that extends the experiential reach of a mountain-based observatory beyond its geographic constraints. The application allows users to virtually explore a research telescope and interactively learn about the observatoryâs scientific work, instrumentation, and operational principles. Following interviews with on-site visitors to identify access barriers and learning needs, we developed an XR experience and evaluated it in an in-the-wild study with three school classes (N = 35). We deployed the application across three contexts (remote location, intermediate plateau, mountain summit) and assessed factors such as mental load, presence, motivation, perceived access, and quiz results. Our findings indicate that context-dependent physical proximity influences all factors except the quiz outcome, highlighting the importance of proximity-aware design for future XR systems.