How NASA added music to our galaxy thanks to the Chandra telescope

Let’s get this clarification out of the way: space telescopes don’t record sounds. Sound is a mechanical wave that needs a medium, such as air, to propagate The space is empty. However, during the pandemic, NASA began working with musicians and digital artists to “record” observations from one of its space telescopes.

Even though he is close to retirement… Chandra Space Telescope He continues to bring joy to NASA through works such as the discovery of the oldest black hole or this recent symphonic work composed of observations of the center of the Milky Way.

a cooperation Between NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center and System Sounds Digital data They are captured by a space telescope and converted into notes and other sounds to create a piece of music.

For NASA, this is a way to “experience the data through the sense of hearing rather than viewing it as images,” and is the most common way of presenting astronomical data from a telescope. The new format brings blind people closer to astronomy, but also gives dimension More lively To the violent explosions of stars and clouds of gas in the Milky Way.

Composer Sophie Kastner was responsible for this Translating what has not been heard In symphonic music later performed by the Montreal Orchestra. His work “Where Parallel Lines Meet” exemplifies Signs observed by Chandra In the central region of our galaxy, known as the Galactic Center.

In addition to having an unoriginal name, Galactic center It is hidden from the naked eye by stardust, but the Chandra telescope is able to capture in a variety of wavelengths (X-ray, infrared and visible light) the gas swirls and lines woven by magnetic fields in this place on the Milky Way planet, where there is a supermassive black hole. .

The work can be downloaded as midi fileBut also Sheet music for different instrumentsif you want to Explain it yourself at home. It would make for an awkward conversation to break the ice. what are you playing? Data captured by a space telescope from the center of our galaxy.

Image | NASA/CXC/NGST

In Chataka | The Great Attractor, the place where our galaxy and everything around it flows