New black hole sonifications with a remix are now available for listening

The black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. Astronomers discovered that the hot gas in the cluster could be translated into a note, one that humans cannot hear, because of the pressure waves sent out by the black hole. This new sonification, that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound, is being released for NASA's Black Hole Week this year.

This sonification is unlike any other done before because it revisits the actual sound waves discovered in data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The misconception that there is no sound in space is caused by the fact that most of the space is a vacuum. A galaxy cluster has a lot of gas that surrounds hundreds or even thousands of galaxies, providing a medium for sound waves to travel.

The sound waves that were previously identified were made audible for the first time. The sound waves were taken in radial directions. The signals were adjusted upward by 57 and 58 degrees to reach the range of human hearing. They are being heard more than their original frequencies. The number is 1,000,000,000,000,000. The scans around the image allow you to hear different waves. Blue and purple show the data captured by Chandra.

A new sonification of a famous black hole is being released. The black hole in M 87 gained celebrity status in science after the first release of the event horizon telescope in 2019. This new sonification doesn't feature the EHT data, but rather looks at data from other telescopes that observed M87 at the same time. There are three panels that are visible in the image, from top to bottom, that are X-rays from Chandra, optical light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and radio waves from the Atacama Large Millimeter array. The structure to the upper right of the image is a jet produced by the black hole. The material falls onto the black hole. 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 the lowest tones, optical data to medium tones, and X-rays detected by Chandra to the highest tones. The loudest part of the image is where the black hole is located.

The Chandra X-ray Center led these sonifications and they were included in the Universe of Learning program. The collaboration was led by visualization scientist Kim Arcand, astronomer Matt Russo, and musician Andrew Santaguida. The Chandra program is managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center. The Chandra X-ray Center is located in Burlington, Massachusetts.

More information: More sonifications of astronomical data, as well as additional information on the process, can be found at the "A Universe of Sound" website: chandra.si.edu/sound/

Chandra images, multimedia and related materials can be found at www.nasa.gov/chandra.

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