Uranus Sonification

The left to right scan, the sounds begin with a cello that traces the arcing ring — not as famous as Saturn’s but still prominent — around the ice giant Uranus. The notes change to represent the amount of reflected light and its location on Uranus as seen in an optical light image from the W.M. Keck Observatory. The X-rays detected by Chandra, which come from X-rays from the Sun that are reflected, are heard as higher frequencies as the scan passes over the pinkish region of the planet. The apparent asymmetry in the X-rays may not be a real effect because of the faint signal and the smoothing that was applied to the image.

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The Chandra sonifications were led by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC), with input from NASA's Universe of Learning. The sustained collaboration was driven by visualization scientist Dr. Kimberly Arcand (CXC), astrophysicist Dr. Matt Russo and musician Andrew Santaguida (both of the SYSTEM Sounds project). For other sonifications, please see their linked pages.