Data Sonification: NASA

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Data Sonification: NASA

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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Key point –  

1. While telescopes offer glimpses of outer space by translating digital data into stunning images, NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Center (CXC) has gone a step further by unveiling a new ‘sonification’ project that transforms data from astronomical images into audio.
2. Users can now ‘listen’ to images of the Galactic Centre, the remains of a supernova called Cassiopeia A, as well as the Pillars of Creation Nebula, which are all located in a region around 26,000 light years away from Earth.

What is data sonification –

1. Data sonification refers to the use of sound values to represent real data. Simply put, it is the auditory version of data visualisation. With this data sonification project, users can now experience different phenomena captured in astronomical images as an aural experience.
2. The birth of a star, a cloud of dust or even a black hole can now be ‘heard’ as a high or low pitched sound.

How did NASA translate astronomical images into sound – 

1. 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.
2. The Chandra project has created a celestial concert of sorts by translating the same data into sound. Pitch and volume are used to denote the brightness and position of a celestial object or phenomenon.
3. 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.

The Galactic Centre –

1. The first example is that of the Galactic Centre, which is the rotational centre of the Milky Way galaxy.
2. It comprises a collection of celestial objects — neutron and white dwarf stars, clouds of dust and gas, and most notably, a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, that weighs four million times the mass of the sun.
3. Based on data gathered by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, an image is rendered using X-ray, visible and infrared light before being translated into sound.

Cassiopeia A – 

1. Located around 11,000 light years away from Earth in the northern Cassiopeia constellation, Cassiopeia A is one of the most well-known remnants of a once-massive star that was destroyed by a supernova explosion around 325 years ago, according to NASA.

The Pillars of Creation – 

1. The iconic Pillars of Creation is located in the centre of the Eagle Nebula, which is also known as Messier 16. The Hubble Star Telescope was used for images of the celestial structure, which comprises wispy towers of cosmic dust and gas. Here too, different colours are used to represent elements — blue for oxygen, red for sulphur and green for both nitrogen and hydrogen.

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