Data Sonification: Uranus, Composite

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. Original sonifications from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory help commemorate this latest “planet parade”. Uranus: Returning to 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. As you listen to data from the face of the planet, the notes changed 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. Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida), Cello by Johnny Mok More at: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2026/sonify11