In July, the POT revealed the sharpest images of outer space in history, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, marking a before and after in space photography.
Blessed are the eyes of those who see, but the US space agency was aware that people with vision problems would have problems appreciating the wonders of the universe taken by the James Webb.
Now, NASA has published audios and sounds that correspond to each of the areas of space that were photographedallowing blind and low-vision citizens to get closer to space exploration, as the website of The Objective.
The sounds are the work of a team made up of scientists, musicians, and members of the blind and disabled communitywho joined forces to adapt the data offered by the telescope in audio.
Matt Russo, a musician and professor of physics at the University of Toronto, noted: “Our goal is to make Webb’s images and data understandable through sound, helping listeners create their own mental images.”.
Through the channel Youtube used by experts to share videos and audios of what was achieved by the James Webb, they shared several sounds from these photographs, such as that of the cosmic cliffs of the Carina Nebula.
How did you define sounds?
The musicians assigned unique notes to the semi-transparent regions of the images and others to the very dense areas of gas and dust in the nebulathus achieving a complete soundscape.
The voicing technique scans the image from left to right creating a soundtrack in relation to what the image shows.
In this case, the bright light sounds loud and high-pitched, but a slightly less bright light sounds loud and lower-pitched. In another example, the fainter, dust-obscured areas are represented by lower frequencies and clearer, undistorted notes.
It is important to note that these sounds are not real recorded in spacebut Russo and Andrew Santaguida, his collaborating musician, assigned those obtained by the James Webb to the sound.
Next, the rest of the audios with their respective images.
- The Southern Ring Nebula
- The hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b