The southern hemisphere constellation Eridanus has a barred spiral galaxy that is 69 million light-years away. Its arms are adorned with young blue stars, pink cotton candy star-forming clouds, and dark alleyways.
The Hubble Space Telescope has helped tell the story of galaxy NGC 1300, but what is the soundtrack? A spacey, New Age song, featuring a tinkling synthesizer, fit for an ethereal atmosphere. NASA shared a soundscape of the distant galaxy.
Translating digital data from telescopes into different types of light is something many people are used to. That helps human eyes see invisible objects.
1s and 0s can be used to interpret that data into musical notes. Sonification is the process of converting data into sound. The space agency has created sounds to help people experience the stars through their ears. That helps blind or low vision people.
The project has been critiqued. Some people think aural interpretations are confusing because most of space is a vacuum with no medium for sound waves.
Neil deGrasse Tyson said on MSNBC this month that he wasn't a fan of the process of turning data into audio.
There is a misconception that there is no sound in space.
The agency wrote in a post that a galaxy cluster has a large amount of gas that gives it a medium for sound waves to travel.
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Scientists assigned pitches and volumes to elements of the image, such as brightness and position. The brighter the light, the louder the volume.
The image is Scored counterclockwise as a radar scans across the galaxy.
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