Tour: Listen to This Month's "Planetary Parade" with NASA's Chandra
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)
[Runtime: 03:18]

With closed-captions (at YouTube)

In late February, people in the northern hemisphere can look up for a special sight: six planets will all be visible from clear and dark night skies.

Since the planets in our Solar System travel around the Sun in same plane, known as the ecliptic, they will sometimes appear bunched together on the sky if their orbits find them on the same side of the Sun at the same time. When this happens, it looks like the planets have roughly formed a line from our vantage point on Earth.

New sonifications from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory help commemorate this latest so-called Planetary Parade. In the latest sonifications, three of the planets that will be on display — Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus — can be seen and heard in ways that they cannot from the ground on Earth.

While Chandra is best known for its X-ray insight into black holes and other extreme objects, the telescope has also played an important role in the exploration of our Solar System. The Sun gives off X-rays that travel out into the Solar System and can be reflected by planets, moons, and other bodies. This gives astronomers a unique window into certain physics that cannot be discovered through other kinds of telescopes.

The sonification of Jupiter combines X-ray data from Chandra with an infrared image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Woodwind sounds reveal Chandra’s X-ray data including emission from the planet’s auroras. More instruments join in to represent the planet’s complex cloud layers. Next, by combining an optical image from NASA’s Cassini mission with X-rays from Chandra, we can experience Saturn like never before. A siren-like sound follows the arc of the rings and different tones of synthesizers play as the scan passes the planet itself. Finally, we can hear the ice giant of Uranus through the data collected by Chandra and the W.M. Keck Observatory. The data in this sonification reflect the amount of the different light detected from the planet and the orientation of its ring.

Sonifications are translations of astronomical data into sounds. This process of translation preserves the integrity of the data, which arrives on Earth as a series of ones and zeroes (binary code), and shifts it into a form that our brains can process through hearing. Sonifications expand options for people to explore what telescopes discover in space, an example of NASA’s ongoing commitment to share its data as widely as possible.

Quick Look: Listen to This Month's "Planetary Parade" with NASA's Chandra
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)
[Runtime: 00:46]

With narration only (video above with no music)

On February 28, 2026, six planets will appear to line up in the night sky.

This alignment happens when the planets’ orbits take them to the same side of the Sun.

NASA’s Chandra is releasing new sonifications of three of these planets.

Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus reflect X-rays given off by the Sun that Chandra can detect.