On July 12, NASA released the first images recorded by the James Webb space telescope. Now, the space agency has turned the data from these images into sound, allowing us to hear the cosmic wonders seen by the telescope.
The near-infrared and mid-infrared Webb images cover wavelengths invisible to the human eye. The telescope’s images are converted from raw data into light that we can see. Audio-converted images go a step further by taking these infrared wavelengths and matching them to pitches. These sounds describe the Cosmic Abyss of the Carina Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula (both near-infrared and mid-infrared), and spectra of the atmosphere of the demonstrating exoplanet WASP-96b, indicating the presence of water.
These audio conversions (sonification) convert data from different sources in the image into different audio. The brighter light has a higher frequency sound than the fainter sources, judging from the Carina Nebula image, which depicts vast columns of gas and dust and young stars. The lower the light source in the image, the lower the assigned frequency of the sound.
The Webb telescope was launched in December 2021, and a month later it reached the observatory in space, about one and a half million kilometers from Earth. Over the next few months, the telescope went through the process of commissioning its instruments and aligning its mirrors to become fully operational. It now takes remarkably sharp images of some of the faintest and oldest light sources in the universe.
“These compositions provide a different way to experience detailed information from Webb’s initial data,” said Quyen Hart, a senior education and outreach scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in the NASA publication. “Written descriptions are unique translations of visual images. Similarly, audio conversions transform visual images by encoding information such as color, luminosity, star positions or water absorption signatures as audio.”
The Southern Ring Nebula’s sound was twofold. This nebula was imaged in both near-infrared and mid-infrared light, highlighting the distinctive features of the supernova remnant. If you listen closely, you can hear that the converted sound from the mid-infrared image is lower, corresponding to the fact that mid-infrared light has longer wavelengths than near-infrared light.
The Perseus voice was also superimposed over dozens of octaves. The actual sound of ripples in the gas surrounding the Perseus black hole is located at about 262 Hz, about 57 octaves below middle C.
As the Webb telescope observes new targets, from dazzling deep fields to specific star clusters, we may encounter more of these sonic images…
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