NASA’s Chandra project has unveiled a new ‘sonification’ project that transforms space data from astronomical images into audio.
- NASA’s distant telescopes in space collect inherently digital data, in the form of ones and zeroes, before converting them into images. The images are essentially visual representations of light and radiation of different wavelengths in space, that can’t be seen by the human eye.
- The Chandra project has created a celestial concert of sorts by translating the same data into sound.
- Sonification is the process that translates data into sound, and a new project brings the center of the Milky Way to listeners for the first time.
- So far, the astronomers behind Project Chandra have released three examples made using data collected from some of the most distinct features in the sky — the Galactic Centre, Cassiopeia A, and Pillars of Creation Nebula.
- Users can listen to data from this region, roughly 400 light years across, either as “solos” from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope, or together as an ensemble in which each telescope plays a different instrument.
- Each image reveals different phenomena happening in this region about 26,000 light years from Earth. The Hubble image outlines energetic regions where stars are being born, while Spitzer’s infrared image shows glowing clouds of dust containing complex structures.
- X-rays from Chandra reveal gas heated to millions of degrees from stellar explosions and outflows from Sagittarius A*.
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