NASA telescopes tune into a black hole prelude and fugue

NASA has released three new pieces of cosmic sound that are associated with the densest and darkest members of our universe: black holes. These scientific productions are sonifications—or translations into sound—of data collected by NASA telescopes in space, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, and Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).

This new trio of sonifications represents different aspects of black holes. Black holes are neither static nor monolithic. They evolve over time, and are found in a range of sizes and environments.

WR 124

The first movement is a prelude to the potential birth of a black hole. WR124 is an extremely bright, short-lived massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet at a distance of about 28,000 light-years from Earth. These stars fling their outer layers out into space, creating spectacular arrangements seen in an image in infrared light from the Webb telescope.

In the sonification of WR124, this nebula is heard as flutes and the background stars as bells. At the center of WR124, where the scan begins before moving outward, is a hot core of the star that may explode as a supernova and potentially collapse and leave behind a black hole in its wake. As the scan moves from the center outward, X-ray sources detected by Chandra are translated into harp sounds.

Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is heard as metallic bell-like sounds, while the light of the central star is mapped to produce the descending scream-like sound at the beginning. The piece is rounded out by strings playing additional data from the infrared telescopic trio of ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Herschel Space Telescope, NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, and NASA’s retired Wide Image Survey Explorer (WISE) as chords.

SS 433

In the second movement of this black hole composition, listeners can explore a duet. SS 433 is a binary (double) system about 18,000 light-years away that sings out in X-rays. The two members of SS 433 include a star like our sun in orbit around a much heavier partner, either a neutron star or a black hole. This orbital dance causes undulations in X-rays that Chandra, IXPE, and ESA’s XMM-Newton telescopes are tuned into.

These X-ray notes have been combined with radio and infrared data to provide a backdrop for this celestial waltz. The nebula in radio waves resembles a drifting manatee, and the scan sweeps across from right to left. Light towards the top of the image is mapped to higher-pitch sound, with radio, infrared, and X-ray light mapped to low, medium, and high pitch ranges. Bright background stars are played as water-drop sounds, and the location of the binary system is heard as a plucked sound, pulsing to match the fluctuations due to the orbital dance.

Centaurus A

The third and final movement of the black hole-themed sonifications crescendos with a distant galaxy known as Centaurus A, about 12 million light-years away from Earth. At the center of Centaurus A is an enormous black hole that is sending a booming jet across the entire length of the galaxy. Sweeping around clockwise from the top of the image, the scan encounters Chandra’s X-rays and plays them as single-note wind chimes.

X-ray light from IXPE is heard as a continuous range of frequencies, producing a wind-like sound. Visible light data from the European Southern Observatory’s MPG telescope shows the galaxy’s stars that are mapped to string instruments, including foreground and background objects as plucked strings.