Space sounds: Jingle, feather and buzz

The sounds of space

Hear the beauty of the universe. Kimberly Arcand is a visualization researcher and science communicator for Chandra, the X-ray Space Telescope. Since 2020, she and her team have been working to present the sounds of space through sonification, the art of turning scientific data into sound. In this case, they transform the data of the astronomical images into sound. Arcand and his team released this new opus of their work on September 16, 2021. The videos on this page will allow you to listen to a stellar nursery, a supernova remnant and a supermassive black hole.

Arcand’s team emphasizes that sonication allows visually impaired people to hear what others see. Plus, they say, their work gives everyone a deeper experience of the universe. Arcand said:

Each sonication is created to best represent scientific data in a way that makes the most sense for the specific data, accurately representing it and telling the story, while providing a new way to convey meaning through the his.

Westerlund 2

Westerlund 2 is a region of star formation located 20,000 light years from Earth. Scientists used a combination of data observed in both optical light and x-rays to create this sonified version of Westerlund 2. For this nebula, the soundbar sweeps from left to right. When the bar meets a brighter light, it produces a louder sound. Higher notes correspond to a higher vertical position in the image. Stringed instruments play optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Bells plays Chandra’s x-ray data.

Westerlund 2 is about 44 light years in diameter. The stellar nursery is in the direction of the southern constellation Carina. Inside the nebula is a cluster containing some of the hottest, brightest, and most massive stars known.

The rest of Tycho’s supernova

This large colored ball of gas and dust is the remnant of Tycho’s supernova or SN 1572. Sonication for SN 1572 begins in the center and extends outward in a circle, in keeping with how the rest were. created. The different colors in the image represent different elements: red represents iron, green represents silicon, and blue represents sulfur. For this sonication, the redder light produces the lowest notes. The higher notes represent blue and purple light. The different proportions of iron (red), silicon (green), and sulfur (blue) appear in sounds when you hear the low to high frequency spikes. Once the sound comes out of the rest of the supernova, you hear the harp strings pluck. These ratings represent the visible stars imaged by Hubble. The colors of the stars determine their height.

SN 1572 appeared as a shining “new star” to Cassiopeia in 1572. The sudden appearance of the new star shattered the long-held belief that the heavens were immutable. Tycho Brahe, among many others of the time, studied the supernova, and the vestige now bears his name.

The central region of M87

M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy with a (rather famous) supermassive black hole at its center. For this sonication, from the central region around the black hole, the sound scans the object from a central point, like a radar sweeping the sky. The scan begins its scan at the three o’clock position. The brighter the light, the louder the sound, while the light farther from the center is sharper.

M87’s black hole projects jets filled with energetic particles. These jets impact the surrounding gas clouds. Blue data is from X-ray emissions observed by the Chandra Space Telescope, while red and orange is long wavelength radio data from the Very Large Array. Scientists gave the radio data a weaker tone than the high-energy x-ray data. This choice of height corresponds to their frequency ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum. The stars sound like short, pinched notes.

Check out the new image of the M87 black hole released earlier this year.

Conclusion: Sonification of space is when scientists transform their astronomical data into sound. A new opus features the sonification of three different objects: a stellar nursery, a supernova remnant and a supermassive black hole.

Via Chandra X-ray Observatory