Listen your way through the complex Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula.
You can now immerse two of your senses into space from right here on Earth. Not only can your eyes feast on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's, but your ears can now also listen to the accompanying complex soundscapes of two of these full-color photos.
As Matt Russo, a musician and physics professor at the University of Toronto, said to NASA: “Our goal is to make Webb’s images and data understandable through sound – helping listeners create their own mental images.”Interestingly, people who are blind or low vision, as well as people who can see clearly all reported they learned something about astronomical photos purely by listening. They also explained that these auditory soundscapes "deeply resonated with them.
Christine Malec, a member of the blind and low vision community who supported the project, said: “When I first heard a sonification, it struck me in a visceral, emotional way that I imagine sighted people experience when they look up at the night sky.”As the NASA team intended, these soundscapes are making James Webb's images even more available to a wider range of people.
For instance, in the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula soundscape, the team assigned unique notes to the semi-transparent, gauzy regions and very dense areas of gas and dust in the nebula, culminating in a buzzing soundscape.