Tag Archives: Chandra Sonifications

Why convert space data into sounds?

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The Eagle Nebula (also known as M16 or the Pillars of Creation) was one of the 3 cosmic objects sonified and used in the study. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/M.Guarcello et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI [downloaded from https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2024/03/25/communication-nasa-scientists-space-data-sounds]

Apparently, it’s all about communication or so a March 24, 2024 Frontiers news release (also on EurekAlert but published March 25, 2024) by Kim Arcand and Megan Watzke suggests, Note: Links have been removed,

Images from telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope have expanded the way we see space. But what if you can’t see? Can stars be turned into sounds instead? In this guest editorial, NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] scientists and science communicators Dr Kimberly Arcand and Megan Watzke explain how and why they and their colleagues transformed telescope data into soundscapes to share space science with the whole world. To learn more, read their new research published in Frontiers in Communication.

When you travel somewhere where they speak a language you can’t understand, it’s usually important to find a way to translate what’s being communicated to you. In some ways, the same can be said about scientific data collected from cosmic objects. A telescope like NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captures X-rays, which are invisible to the human eye, from sources across the cosmos. Similarly, the James Webb Space Telescope captures infrared light, also invisible to the human eye. These different kinds of light are transmitted down to Earth packed up in the form of ones and zeroes. From there, the data are transformed into a variety of formats — from plots to spectra to images.

This last category — images — is arguably what telescopes are best known for. For most of astronomy’s long history, however, most people who are blind or low vision (BLV) have not been able to fully experience the data that these telescopes have captured. NASA’s Universe of Sound data sonification program, with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA’s Universe of Learning, translates visual data of objects in space into sonified data. All telescopes — including Chandra, Webb, the Hubble Space Telescope, plus dozens of others — in space need to send the data they collect back to Earth as binary code, or digital signals. Typically, astronomers and others turn these digital data into images, which are often spectacular and make their way into everything from websites to pillowcases.

The music of the spheres

By taking these data through another step, however, experts on this project mathematically map the information into sound. This data-driven process is not a reimagining of what the telescopes have observed, it is yet another kind of translation. Instead of a translation from French to Mandarin, it’s a translation from visual to sound. Releases from the Universe of Sound sonification project have been immensely popular with non-experts, from viral news stories with over two billion people potentially reached according to press metrics, to triple the usual Chandra.si.edu website traffic.

But how are such data sonifications perceived by people, particularly members of the BLV community? How do data sonifications affect participant learning, enjoyment, and exploration of astronomy? Can translating scientific data into sound help enable trust or investment, emotionally or intellectually, in scientific data? Can such sonifications help improve awareness of accessibility needs that others might have?

Listening closely

This study used our sonified NASA data of three astronomical objects. We surveyed blind or low-vision and sighted individuals to better understand participant experiences of the sonifications, relating to their enjoyment, understanding, and trust of the scientific data. Data analyses from 3,184 sighted or blind or low-vision participants yielded significant self-reported learning gains and positive experiential responses.

The results showed that astrophysical data engaging multiple senses like the sonifications could establish additional avenues of trust, increase access, and promote awareness of accessibility in sighted and blind or low-vision communities. In short, sonifications helped people access and engage with the Universe.

Sonification is an evolving and collaborative field. It is a project not only done for the BLV community, but with BLV partnerships. A new documentary available on NASA’s free streaming platform NASA+ explores how these sonifications are made and the team behind them. The hope is that sonifications can help communicate the scientific discoveries from our Universe with more audiences, and open the door to the cosmos just a little wider for everyone.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A Universe of Sound: processing NASA data into sonifications to explore participant response by Kimberly Kowal Arcand, Jessica Sarah Schonhut-Stasik, Sarah G. Kane, Gwynn Sturdevant, Matt Russo, Megan Watzke, Brian Hsu, Lisa F. Smith. Front. Commun., 13 March 2024 Volume 9 – 2024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1288896

This paper is open access.

Chandra Sonifications (extraplanetary music and data sonification)

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I’m not sure why the astronomy community is so taken with creating music out of data but it seems to be the most active of the science communities in the field. This October 15. 2023 article by Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon.com provides a little context before describing some of the latest work, Note: Links have been removed,

Christine Malec, who has been blind since birth, has always been a big astronomy buff, fascinated by major questions about the universe like what happens when a limit reaches infinity and whether things like space travel could one day become a reality. However, throughout her childhood, most astronomical information was only accessible to her via space documentaries or science fiction books.

Nearly a decade ago, Malec discovered a completely new way to experience astronomy when she saw astronomer and musician Matt Russo, Ph.D., give a presentation at a local planetarium in Toronto. Using a process called astronomical sonification, Russo had translated information collected from the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, which has seven planets locked in an orbital resonance, into something people who are blind or have low vision could experience: music. 

Russo’s song sent a wave of goosebumps through Malec’s body. Something she had previously understood intellectually but never had turned into a sensory experience was suddenly, profoundly felt.

“It was unforgettable,” Malec told Salon in a phone interview. “I compare it to what it might be like for a sighted person to look up at the night sky and get a sensory intuition of the size and nature of the cosmos. As a blind person, that’s an experience I hadn’t had.”

Through astronomical sonification, scientists map complex astronomical structures like black holes or exploded stars through the similarly expansive and multidimensional world of sound. Translating data from outer space into music not only expands access to astronomy for people who are blind or have low vision, but it also has the potential to help all scientists better understand the universe by leading to novel discoveries. Like images from the James Webb telescope that contextualize our tiny place in the universe, astronomical sonification similarly holds the power to connect listeners to the cosmos.

“It really does bring a connection that you don’t necessarily get when you’re just looking at a cluster of galaxies that’s billions of light years away from you that stretches across many hundreds of millions of light years,” said Kimberly Kowal Arcand, Ph.D., a data visualizer for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. “Having sound as a way of experiencing that type of phenomenon, that type of object, whatever it is, is a very valid way of experiencing the world around you and of making meaning.”

Malec serves as a consultant for Chandra Sonifications, which translates complex data from astronomical objects into sound. One of their most popular productions, which has been listened to millions of times, sonified a black hole in the Perseus cluster galaxy about 240 million light-years away. When presenting this sonification at this year’s [2023] SXSW festival in March, Russo, who works with Chandra through an organization he founded called SYSTEM Sounds, said this eerie sound used to depict the black hole had been likened to “millions of damned souls being sucked into the pits of hell.” 

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Here’s some of what the audience at the 2023 SXSW festival heard,

If you have the time , do read Hlavinka’s October 15. 2023 article as she tells a good story with many interesting tidbits such as this (Note: Links have been removed),

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William “Bill” Kurth, Ph.D., a space physicist at the University of Iowa, said the origins of astronomical sonification can be traced back to at least the 1970s when the Voyager-1 spacecraft recorded electromagnetic wave signals in space that were sent back down to his team on Earth, where they were processed as audio recordings.

Back in 1979, the team plotted the recordings on a frequency-time spectrogram similar to a voiceprint you see on apps that chart sounds like birds chirping, Kurth explained. The sounds emitted a “whistling” effect created by waves following the magnetic fields of the planet rather than going in straight lines. The data seemed to confirm what they had suspected: lightning was shocking through Jupiter’s atmosphere.

“At that time, the existence of lightning anywhere other than in Earth’s atmosphere was unknown,” Kurth told Salon in a phone interview. “This became the first time that we realized that lightning might exist on another planet.”

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And this (Note: Links have been removed),

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Beyond astronomy, sonification can be applied to any of the sciences, and health researchers are currently looking at tonifying DNA strands to better understand how proteins fold in multiple dimensions. Chandra is also working on constructing tactile 3-D models of astronomical phenomena, which also expands access for people who are blind or have low vision — those who have historically only been able to experience these sciences through words, Malec said.

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Chandra and other sonification projects

I found a brief and somewhat puzzling description of the Chandra sonification project on one of the of US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) websites. From a September 22, 2021 posting on the Marshall Science Research and Projects Division blog (Note: Links have been removed,)

On 9/16/21, a Chandra sonification image entitled “Jingle, Pluck, and Hum: Sounds from Space” was released to the public.  Since 2020, Chandra’s “sonification” project has transformed astronomical data from some of the world’s most powerful telescopes into sound.  Three new objects — a star-forming region, a supernova remnant, and a black hole at the center of a galaxy — are being released.  Each sonification has its own technique to translate the astronomical data into sound.

For more information visit: Data Sonifications: Westerlund 2 (Multiwavelength), Tycho’s Supernova Remnant, and M87. https://www.nasa.gov/missions_pages/chandra/main/index.html.

A Chandra article entitled “Data Sonification: Sounds from the Milky Way” was also released in the NASA STEM Newsletter.  This newsletter was sent to 54,951 subscribers and shared with the office of STEM engagements social media tools with approximately 1.7M followers. For more information visit: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/NASA-EXPRESS—-Your-STEM-Connection-for-Sept–9–2021.html?soid=1131598650811&aid=iXfzAJk6x_s

I’m a little puzzled by the reference to a Chandra sonification image but I’m assuming that they also produce data visualizations. Anyway, as Hlavinka notes Chandra is a NASA X-ray Observatory and they have a number of different projects/initiatives.

Getting back to data sonification, Chandra offers various audio files on its A Universe of Sound webpage,

Here’s a sampling of three data sonification posts (there are more) here,

Enjoy!