NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Center Transforms Milky Way Telescope Data Into Sheet Music

Since ancient times, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. In a recent breakthrough, a team of scientists enabled actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for music that humans can play.

Music-Inspired Space Project

Space telescopes floating about in space usually capture data in a visual format, although it is also possible to turn data into sound in a sonification technique. In this process, visual data are assigned values of a specific sound that humans can hear. This way, people can "listen" to information rather than just seeing it.

This same process was carried out by musicians who used the sounds produced by NASA's space telescopes to perform a soundscape. Since 2020, the sonification project at Chandra X-ray Center has translated digital data from space telescopes into musical notes and sounds. In collaboration with composer Sophie Kastner, the team developed versions of the data that musicians can play.

Kaster's Galactic Centerpiece is entitled "Where Parallel Lines Converge ". It is a tryptic piece highlighting three astronomical objects, including the arched filaments, X-ray binary, and Sagittarius A*.

The pilot program focuses on data from a tiny region at the center of the Milky Way galaxy where a supermassive black hole can be found. This area, which spans about 400 light-years across, was studied by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

For years, astronomers have worked on these data, which were taken using infrared light, visible light, and X-ray radiation. Translating these data into sound has been a huge step for the team, and now their collaboration with Kastner lets them try something completely new for them.

Kastner focuses on small sections of the celestial image to make the data more playable for people. Doing so also allowed her to create spotlights on specific parts of the image, easily overlooked when the full sonification is played.

The trial project resulted in a new composition based upon and influenced by actual data from NASA telescopes but with elements of humanity. In the future, Kastner hopes to expand this pilot composition project to other objects in the data sonification collection of Chandra X-ray Center. She also plans to bring in other musical collaborators interested in using the data in their music pieces.

How Does Data Sonification Work?

Data sonification refers to the presentation of data as sound using sonification. It is the auditory equivalent of data visualization. In data sonification, computers use algorithms to mathematically map digital data from telescopes to sounds humans can perceive. It involves using a software analyzer to direct the digital media of a dataset into a digital-to-analog converter.

Traditional data visualization techniques use charts, graphs, and images to represent data. Meanwhile, data sonification provides an auditory representation of data and offers a unique and complementary perspective on the information under study.

Check out more news and information on Sonification in Science Times.