NASA makes music with outer space data

'Data sonification maps' were used to achieve the same

Scientists at NASA have stunned us with their unconventional musical capabilities – and it is not what it sounds like.

They have used ‘data sonification maps’ and converted astronomical data taken from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope (among other telescopes) into sounds and ultimately musical pieces, reports The Print.

‘Data sonification maps’ are what allows data to be ‘heard’ instead of just being visual. It also does not alter the original content in the process.

The deepest image to be taken in X-rays ever was the first of 3 images created by such data sonification maps.

The southern hemisphere is where the observed field is in the first image.

Contrary to the various coloured dots on the image appearing as stars at first glance, almost all of them are actually supermassive black holes present at the nucleus of galaxies.

In this data sonification, tones are set by the colours with the bar travelling from the bottom to the top of the image, with the range of musical frequencies representing the complete range of frequencies the Chandra X-ray Observatory obtained from the region.

The tones are lower towards the rainbow’s red end and get higher as purple approaches.

The other two images sonified were of the Cat’s Eye nebula and the M51 galaxy.