Blazars are galaxies whose central supermassive black hole, weighing millions to billions of times our Sun’s mass, blasts a particle jet almost directly toward us at nearly the speed of light.

This track sonifies a decade of gamma rays from the blazar TXS 0506+056 detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope between August 2008 and May 2018. The percussive sounds match the energy of the detected gamma rays. Unprecedented flaring activity began in April 2017 and continued for months. On Sept. 22, 2017, an observatory at the South Pole detected a high-energy neutrino thought to have originated from the blazar. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration., Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida/SYSTEM Sounds

Blazar Flare Sonification

This track sonifies the Chandra Deep Field South, the deepest X-ray exposure ever made, comprising over 81 days of observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. 

Moving from bottom to top, the colors in the image determine the tones played. More specifically, colors toward the red end of the rainbow rumble as lower tones, while colors containing more purple play as higher ones. White areas in the image are heard as white noise. Almost all of the sources represented in the image are black holes or galaxies. Most of the former are supermassive black holes that reside at the centers of galaxies. The wide range of musical frequencies represents the full range of X-ray colors collected by Chandra from this region. Note that as the piece scans upward, the stereo position of the sounds provides clues about the position of the sources from left to right. 

Credit: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B.Luo et al.; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

Chandra Deep Field Sonification

The core of our Milky Way galaxy is densely packed with gas, dust, stars, and stellar remnants, but its centerpiece is a monster black hole with a mass of 4 million Suns called Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”).

This sonification tracks an image of the galactic center captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope in X-ray, optical, and infrared light, respectively. A different instrument represents each observatory, with a xylophone for Chandra, a violin for Hubble and a soft piano for Spitzer. The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with sounds representing the positions and brightness of the sources. The light of objects located toward the top of the image have higher pitch, while the intensity of the light controls the volume. Stars and compact sources emerge as individual notes, while extended clouds of gas and dust produce an evolving drone. A crescendo happens in the brightest region of the image, where the supermassive black hole resides. The Hubble image outlines energetic regions where stars are being born, while Spitzer’s infrared data show 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*. 

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: Spitzer NASA/JPL-Caltech; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

Galactic Center Sonification

The core of our Milky Way galaxy is densely packed with gas, dust, stars and stellar remnants, but its centerpiece is a monster black hole with a mass of 4 million Suns called Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”). This sonification tracks an image of the galactic center captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light.

The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with sounds representing the positions and brightness of the sources. Objects located toward the top of the image play at higher pitches, while their brightness controls the volume. Spitzer’s view of the galactic center highlights glowing clouds of cool dust containing complex structures. 

Credit: IR: Spitzer NASA/JPL-Caltech; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

Galactic Center Infrared Sonification

The core of our Milky Way galaxy is densely packed with gas, dust, stars, and stellar remnants, but its centerpiece is a monster black hole with a mass of 4 million Suns called Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”). This sonification tracks an image of the galactic center captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in optical light.

The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with sounds representing the positions and brightness of the sources. The light of objects located toward the top of the image take on higher pitches, while their brightness controls the volume. Hubble’s view of the galactic center outlines energetic regions where stars are being born. 

Credit: Optical: NASA/STScI; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

Galactic Center Optical Light Sonification

The core of our Milky Way galaxy is densely packed with gas, dust, stars and stellar remnants, but its centerpiece is a monster black hole with a mass of 4 million Suns called Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”). This sonification tracks an image of the galactic center captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with sounds representing the positions and brightness of the sources. Objects located toward the top of the image play as higher pitches, while their brightness determines the volume. X-rays seen by Chandra reveal gas heated to millions of degrees from stellar explosions and outflows from Sagittarius A*. 

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

Galactic Center X-ray Sonification

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname, the Whirlpool Galaxy because its face-on orientation to us highlights its winding spiral arms. This gives our telescopes a different perspective on a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, whose structure we cannot observe directly since we’re inside it. The sonification tracks along a line emanating from the galaxy's core to the edge of the image and scanning clockwise. 

The light encountered by this line has been mapped to the notes of a melodic minor scale. Each of the four types of light captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and Chandra X-ray Observatory has their own unique frequency range. At wavelengths where the spiral arms are prominent, the pitch creeps upward as the spiral extends farther from the core. The bright core, which harbors a supermassive black hole, produces a constant low hum punctuated by short sounds from compact bright sources within the galaxy. 

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard et al; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith & Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Univ. of AZ/R. Kennicutt; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

M51 Sonification

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname, the Whirlpool Galaxy, because its face-on orientation to us highlights its winding spiral arms. This gives our telescopes a different perspective on a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, whose structure we cannot observe directly since we’re inside it. The sonification tracks along a line emanating from the galaxy's core to the edge of the image and scanning clockwise. The light encountered by this line has been mapped to the notes of a melodic minor scale. The sequence represents infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. 

At this wavelength, the spiral arms are prominent, so the pitch creeps upward as the spiral extends farther from the core. The bright core, which harbors a supermassive black hole, produces a constant low hum punctuated by short sounds from compact bright sources within the galaxy. 

Credit: IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Univ. of AZ/R. Kennicutt; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

M51 Infrared Sonification

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname, the Whirlpool Galaxy, because its face-on orientation to us highlights its winding spiral arms. This gives our telescopes a different perspective on a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, whose structure we cannot observe directly since we’re inside it. The sonification tracks along a line emanating from the galaxy's core to the edge of the image and scanning clockwise. The light encountered by this line has been mapped to the notes of a melodic minor scale. The sequence represents optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. 

At this wavelength, the spiral arms are prominent, so the pitch creeps upward as the spiral stretches farther from the core. The bright core, which harbors a supermassive black hole, produces a constant low hum punctuated by short sounds from compact bright sources within the galaxy. 

Credit: Optical: NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith & Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

M51 Optical Light Sonification

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname, the Whirlpool Galaxy, because its face-on orientation to us highlights its winding spiral arms. This gives our telescopes a different perspective on a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, whose structure we cannot observe directly since we’re inside it. The sonification tracks along a line emanating from the galaxy's core to the edge of the image and scanning clockwise. The light encountered by this line has been mapped to the notes of a melodic minor scale. The sequence represents ultraviolet data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. 

The bright core, which harbors a supermassive black hole, produces a constant low hum punctuated by short sounds from compact bright sources within the galaxy. 

Credit: UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

M51 Ultraviolet Sonification

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname of the Whirlpool Galaxy because its face-on orientation to Earth reveals its wound-up spiral arms. This gives telescopes here a view of another spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, whose structure we cannot observe directly from our position within it. The sonification tracks along a line emanating from the galaxy's core to the edge of the image and scanning clockwise. The light encountered by this line has been mapped to the notes of a melodic minor scale. The sequence represents X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The bright core, which harbors a supermassive black hole, produces a constant low hum punctuated by short sounds from compact bright sources within the galaxy, including many stellar-sized black holes. 

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard et al; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/Kimberly Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida)

M51 X-ray Sonification

Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note — one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. A new sonification — that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound — is being released in time for NASA’s Black Hole Week this year.

In some ways, this sonification is unlike any other done before because it revisits the actual sound waves discovered in data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The popular misconception that there is no sound in space originates with the fact that most of space is essentially a vacuum, providing no medium for sound waves to propagate through. A galaxy cluster, on the other hand, has copious amounts of gas that envelops the hundreds or even thousands of galaxies within it, providing an avenue for the sound waves to travel.

In this new sonification of Perseus, the sound waves that were previously identified were extracted and made audible for the first time. The sound waves were extracted in radial directions, that is, outwards from the center. The signals were then resynthesized into the range of human hearing by scaling them upward by 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch. Another way to put this is that they are being heard 144 and 288 quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) times higher than their original frequency. The radar-like scan around the image allows you to hear waves emitted in different directions. In the visual image of these data, blue and purple both show X-ray data captured by Chandra.

Learn more: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/sonify5/ 

Sonification Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Black Hole Sonification: Perseus

Studied by scientists for decades, the black hole in Messier 87, or M87, gained celebrity status in science after the first release from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project in 2019. This new sonification does not feature the EHT data, but rather looks at data from other telescopes that observed M87 on much wider scales at roughly the same time. The image in visual form contains three panels that are, from top to bottom, X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, optical light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and radio waves from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile. The sonification scans across the three-tiered image from left to right, with each wavelength mapped to a different range of audible tones. Radio waves are mapped to lowest tones, optical data to medium tones, and X-rays detected by Chandra to the highest tones. The brightest part of the image corresponds to the loudest portion of the sonification, which is where astronomers find the 6.5 billion solar mass black hole that EHT imaged.

Learn more: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/sonify5/ 

Sonification Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Black Hole Sonification: M87

NASA’s Webb Telescope uncovered two views of the Southern Ring Nebula – in near-infrared light (at left in the track image) and mid-infrared light (at right in the track image) – and each has been adapted to sound.

In this sonification, the colors in the images were mapped to pitches of sound – frequencies of light converted directly to frequencies of sound. Near-infrared light is represented by a higher range of frequencies at the beginning of the track. Mid-way through, the notes change, becoming lower overall to reflect that mid-infrared includes longer wavelengths of light.
 
Listen carefully at 15 seconds and 44 seconds. These notes align with the centers of the near- and mid-infrared images, where the stars at the center of the “action” appear. In the near-infrared image that begins the track, only one star is heard clearly, with a louder clang. 

In the second half of the track, listeners will hear a low note just before a higher note, which denotes that two stars were detected in mid-infrared light. The lower note represents the redder star that created this nebula, and the second is the star that appears brighter and larger.
 
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-webb-s-first-full-color-images-data-are-set-to-sound

Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; Accessibility Production: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and Kimberly Arcand (CXC/SAO), Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida (SYSTEM Sounds), Quyen Hart (STScI), Claire Blome (STScI), and Christine Malec (consultant).

Webb’s Southern Ring Nebula Sonification

Astronomical data from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been translated into sounds we can hear.
artist: Chandra X-ray Observatory
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, M. Russo & A. Santaguida)

Black Hole 'Sound' in the Perseus Galaxy Cluster

How to pronounce the name of Rosetta's comet: Churyumov–Gerasimenko. After Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, the two Ukrainian astronomers who discovered it in 1969. Courtesy of Irina Vavilova from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Churyumov - Gerasimenko - Audio by Irina Vavilova

UPDATE (20 Aug 2015): What made the comet sing? Scientists working on Rosetta's RPC instrument have found out why 67P/C-G was singing. Via http://wp.me/p46DHN-1nN
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ORIGINAL Citation (Oct 2014): Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased in this recording. This sonification of the RPC-Mag data was compiled by German composer Manuel Senfft (www.tagirijus.de).  Read full details in ESA's Rosetta blog: http://wp.me/p46DHN-Li 

Copyright Notice

Original Data Credit: ESA/Rosetta/RPC/RPC-MAG
Sonification: TU Braunschweig/IGEP/Manuel Senfft, CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Thumbnail image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

A Singing Comet

For the first time, NASA released a sonification simultaneously with news results associated with two of its telescopes, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The data cover the region near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, is barely seen in the lower right-hand of the visual image that contains X-ray data from IXPE (red-orange) and Chandra (purple). In the sonification of these data, the cursor begins at Sagittarius A* and moves out as a growing circle toward the center of the image. As it encounters IXPE data, the volume of the notes changes according to the brightness of the X-rays. The brighter the Chandra data, the higher the musical pitch and vice versa. When the cursor travels over a large patch of X-rays both from Chandra and IXPE in the center of the image, a rushing sound is heard. This region is where scientists find a “light echo,” a high-energy relic left behind from an eruption from Sagittarius A* about 200 years ago.

Sagittarius A* Light Echo Sonification

One of the surprising features of black holes is that although light (such as radio, visible, and X-rays) cannot escape from them, surrounding material can produce intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. As they travel outward, these blasts of light can bounce off clouds of gas and dust in space, similar to how light beams from a car’s headlight will scatter off fog.
A new sonification turns these “light echoes” from the black hole called V404 Cygni into sound. Located about 7,800 light-years from Earth, V404 Cygni is a system that contains a black hole, with a mass between five and 10 times the Sun’s, that is pulling material from a companion star in orbit around it. The material is funneled into a disk that encircles the stellar-mass black hole.
This material periodically generates bursts of radiation, including X-rays. As the X-rays travel outward they encounter clouds of gas and dust in between V404 Cygni and Earth and are scattered at various angles. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have imaged the X-ray light echoes around V404 Cygni. Because astronomers know exactly how fast light travels and have determined an accurate distance to this system, they can calculate when these eruptions occurred. This data, plus other information, helps astronomers learn more about the dust clouds, including their composition and distances.

V404 Cygni Sonification

This image shows the region around the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), in infrared (orange and purple) and X-ray light (blue). The image is scanned from left to right and the data are transformed into sound. The brightness of the objects is represented by the volume, while the vertical positions of the sources in the image are mapped to musical pitches. X-rays are played with a soft synthesizer and the infrared data are heard as bass notes and plucked sounds. The brightest region in the middle of the image (and hence the loudest) is where Sgr A* the black hole, resides. It is within this area that the Event Horizon Telescope was able to peer to obtain the first image of Sgr A* itself.

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