Throughout its history, NASA has produced striking images, from the iconic Earthrise to the breathtaking images of the Pillars of Creation, first captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and later by the James Webb Space Telescope. Now, NASA has developed a way for people with no or low vision to listen to space.
NASA took data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and others to produce "sonifications" for several celestial objects. Instead of turning the 1s and 0s from the data into images, NASA turned them into sound. The results are beautiful and awe-inspiring.
The sonification team, which includes astrophysicist Matt Russo, musician Andrew Santaguida (both of the SYSTEM Sounds project), consultant Christine Malec, and Dr. Arcand, assigned each wavelength of observation to a different musical instrument or synthesized sound to create a symphony of data. Making the separate layers publicly available was important to the team to help listeners understand the data better.
NASA also produced a short documentary about the sonification project.
More sonifications can be found here. You can create your own sonifications and even download sheet music from the ones made by NASA. The sonification of Trappist-1 is especially interesting because of the orbital resonance of the solar system's seven planets.
Previously: The promise and peril of "sonification": giving feedback through sound
