Skip to main content

Listen to the sound of a nebula with the space data sonification project

A Quick Look at Data Sonification: Stellar, Galactic, and Black Hole

When it comes to sharing information about distant space objects, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is the beautiful images captured by instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope. But space holds delights for the senses beyond sight, as a NASA project demonstrates. The data sonification project takes the signals picked up by an X-ray observatory and translates them into sounds for an auditory experience of astronomical data.

Recommended Videos

There are three new cosmic wonders whose data has been turned into audioscapes as part of the project: The Chandra Deep Field, the Cat’s Eye Nebula, and the Whirlpool galaxy. Each one has its own sound interpreted from data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

First off, the Chandra Deep Field represents the hundreds of objects observed in the X-ray wavelength across the southern hemisphere. The data look like pinpoints of light which you might assume are stars, but are in fact distant black holes and galaxies. The pitch of each tone reflects the colors of the points, most of which are supermassive black holes, with red colors sounding lower and purple colors sounding higher.

Second up is the beautiful Cat’s Eye nebula. The visualization combines both X-ray data from Chandra and visual light data from Hubble. The nebula is giving off bubbles of energy over time, which are represented by a radar-like scan. The louder tones represent brighter light, and the pitch of the tones represents the distance of the light from the center of the nebula.

Finally, this clip represents the galaxy Messier 51, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. This is another radar-style sonification, starting at the top of the image and moving radially. As the image includes different wavelengths of light like X-ray and ultraviolet, captured by different instruments, these wavelengths have been mapped to different frequencies and assigned to a melodic minor scale. The rising pitches represent the spiral arms of this galaxy, reaching out from its center, while the central core sounds like a continuous low hum.

You can listen to each of the audio clips and see more information about their sources on the Chandra X-ray Observatory website.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
How to watch SpaceX launch private Fram2 mission tonight
SpaceX's Fram2 crew, set for launch in March 2025.

SpaceX is about to launch its first private human spaceflight mission in nearly seven months.

The mission, set to lift off on Monday evening, will use a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft to send four civilians into a polar orbit, in what will be a first for a human spaceflight mission.

Read more
Watch these curious dolphins greet returning Crew-9 astronauts
Dolphins swim close to SpaceX's Crew-9 capsule shortly after splashdown on Tuesday, March 18.

A pod of curious dolphins showed up to greet the returning SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts shortly after they splashed down off the coast of Florida at about 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, March 18.

The four-person crew included NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who ended up staying in orbit for way longer than originally planned.

Read more
NASA’s ‘stuck’ astronauts have finally left the space station
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

After a nine-month stay that was only supposed to last eight days, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have finally left the International Space Station (ISS) and are on their way home.

Seated inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft alongside fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, Williams and Wilmore undocked from the orbital outpost at 1:05 a.m. ET on Tuesday, March 18.

Read more