For July 4, NASA unveils an astronomical fireworks display, accompanied by sound effects

NASA lights up the cosmos in red, white and blue in honor of 250^tIt’s America’s birthday, and the show even has sound.

The images show the remains of the supernova Cassiopeia A, the dusty nebula NGC 3603, the spiral galaxy Messier 94 and the galaxy cluster ZwCl 0024+1652. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and ground-based telescopes are depicted in a patriotic color palette.

To make this cosmic fireworks display not only visual, but also auditory, optical data from three of the images was matched with sounds from different instruments in a process called sonification.

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Cassiopeia A, the only silent image in the new July 4 series, is a supernova remnant located 11,000 light years from Earth. It is a real cosmic firecracker, an exploded star whose blast wave is still visible in the X-ray emissions. Here, this explosion is represented in blue according to Chandra’s observations. Red and white infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope show in red and white the expanding stellar material resulting from the explosion.

Meanwhile, nebula NGC 3603 looks like a chrysanthemum firework bursting bright red. This star forming region is located 20,000 light years from Earth. NASA scientists sonified the image of NGC 3603 by attributing different elements of the image to sound. For example, neutron stars and black holes register like piano notes, while Hubble’s optical imaging becomes the gentle strumming of an acoustic guitar. The background hum comes from X-ray emissions detected by Chandra.

In the image of Messier 94, a spiral galaxy also known as NGC 4736, X-ray data from Chandra fades into a whistling wind while dense features such as neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes ring out in the crystalline tones of a glass marimba. Piano notes resonate to represent distant stars and galaxies. This magnificent galaxy is 16 million light years from Earth, but it is so bright that it can be spotted with a good commercial telescope (although not in red, white and blue, as seen here).

The distance to Messier 94 is nothing compared to the journey it would take to get to the galaxy cluster ZwCl 0024+1652, located 5 billion light years from our solar system. This galaxy cluster is known for its unique dark matter structure, formed during a collision between two distinct galaxy clusters. While dark matter structures often follow the contours of visible matter such as gases and stars, the dark matter ring of ZwCl 0024+1652 stands out. Here it is seen in the Hubble data in bright blue. A synthesized sci-fi sound highlights the strange nature of ZwCl 0024+1652, with the music peaking at the dark matter ring and again at the heart of the cluster’s superheated gas. The piano notes highlight the background galaxies, while the background stars sound like notes on a glockenspiel.

NASA’s sonification program began in 2020 to translate astronomical data into frequencies audible to the human ear. It’s part of an attempt to raise awareness among blind and visually impaired people, but also offers sighted people a chance to explore the universe with a new sense. There is even a tool allowing everyone to convert visuals of space into soundcreating their own song of the cosmos.