Listen to the rhythms of the pulsating red giant star called Edasich based on brightness measurements from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Just below the surfaces of these stars, hot gas rises, cools, and then sinks, where it heats up again, much like a pan of boiling water on a hot stove. This motion produces waves of changing pressure – sound waves. The interaction of these waves results in orderly motion called standing waves that create measurable changes in the star’s brightness. Larger stars produce longer oscillations and thus have deeper tones. To produce audible tones, astronomers multiplied its oscillation frequency by 3 million times. (Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA), M. Hon et al., 2021)

Red Giant Star Edasich Pulsations

One year ago, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, causing widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga. It spewed volcanic material up to 58 km into the atmosphere, brought a nearly 15 m tsunami that crashed ashore, destroying villages, and created a sonic boom that rippled around the world – twice. 

Even one year on, interest in the extraordinary explosive eruption remains. A sound artist has recently recreated the sonification of the underwater volcanic eruption using rayleigh signal intensity data provided by the Aeolus Virtual Research Environment platform.

Using wind data obtained on one of its overpasses over the ash cloud of the Hunga Tonga explosion, Jamie Perera used an audio sample of one of the shock waves, time-stretched it into a ghostly tone, and assigned it to harmonic values transcribed from 90 Aeolus readings taken over a duration of approximately 15 minutes. 
The listener hears one reading every two seconds, in a harmonic range that spans six piano octaves, the highest of which can be heard at around 01:18 minutes when the readings show the eruption’s dust plume at its highest peak (over 20.5 km). The artistic intention behind the sonification was to evoke the otherworldly landscape of Hunga Tonga and other volcanoes. 

Sonification credit/copyright: @jamieperera (2023). Used by permission. Data and guidance provided by Daniel Santillan. Thanks to Peter Bickerton and Jemma Foster. Originally created as part of Wild Alchemy Journal - Air Edition - Aeolus

Sound of the Hunga Tonga Volcanic Eruption

Between Earth and the Sun, space is not truly empty but is filled with a soup of charged particles called plasma. This plasma comes from the Sun, pumped out in a steady stream called the solar wind and sporadically blasted away in explosive solar eruptions. When this solar plasma strikes Earth, it causes the magnetic field lines and plasma around Earth to vibrate like the plucked strings of a harp, producing ultralow-frequency waves. 

In 2007, NASA launched five satellites to fly through Earth’s magnetic “harp” – its magnetosphere – as part of the THEMIS mission (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms). Since then, THEMIS has been gathering a bounty of information about plasma waves across Earth’s magnetosphere. 

The frequencies of the waves THEMIS measures are too low for our ears to hear, however. So a NASA citizen science project called HARP – or Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas – has sped up the waves recorded by THEMIS to convert them to sound waves.

In this clip from February 21-22, 2012, whistle sounds are repeatedly heard over ambient background whooshes and crunches. The whistles decrease and increase in pitch as a THEMIS spacecraft moves toward and away from Earth on one orbit, with a maximum altitude of about 50,000 miles. These sounds are related to Earth’s magnetic harp, which has longer magnetic strings and lower pitches farther away from Earth.

Earth’s Magnetic Harp

Voyager: Lightning on Jupiter

Juno will improve our understanding of the solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter.

Juno: Entering Jupiter's Magnetosphere

Juno: Crossing Jupiter's Bow Shock

Chorus waves as heard by the EMFISIS instrument aboard NASA’s Van Allen Probes as it passed around Earth.

Credits: NASA/University of Iowa

Plasmawaves - Chorus

Hear intriguing radio waves that our Cassini spacecraft collected near Jupiter in January 2001.

Jupiter Sounds 2001

This recording is a laboratory reconstruction of the sounds heard by Huygens' microphones - the probe that entered the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. Several sound samples, taken at different times during the descent, are here combined together and give a realistic reproduction of what a traveller on board Huygens would have heard during one minute of the descent through Titan's atmosphere.
Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Speeding Through Titan's Haze

Before settling into orbit around Saturn, Cassini faced a white-knuckle ride through the plane of the planet’s rings. When converted into an audio file, the interstellar cacophony is reminiscent of a hellstorm on Earth.

Cassini Shields Up

Postcard 37 comes from anthéne. Also known as one half of North Atlantic Drift, Toronto based Brad Deschamps who has been putting out sublime drones on the likes of Sound in Silence, Assembly Field, Catherdral Transmissions and Polar Seas. On Colour Fields, time seems to stop altogether as fragments of guitar and keyboards meld into a drifting placid mass that shimmers throughout the duration of the entire EP.  Colour Fields has been beautifully mastered by Ian Hawgood.

A limited edition of 60 hand-numbered 3" CDr collectible copies. Available from https://hibernate-recs.uk

Anthéne / Colour Fields (Snippets)

Hello, we’re NASA. You may have seen our astronauts, rocket launches, or Mars rovers — but have you heard our sounds? From interviews with astronauts and engineers to stories that take you on a tour of the galaxy, NASA’s audio offerings let you experience the thrill of space exploration without ever leaving Earth.