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At the excellent BAA meeting in Greenock, Clara Brasseur gave a fascinating talk on “Hearing the Light: Astronomy Data Sonification”. She introduced us to “Astronify – A Python package for sonifying astronomical data – turning telescope observations into sound!”
It takes a table of observations containing their date and observed flux, and converts what would usually be visualised as a lightcurve into sound, where the datapoints are represented by notes across the audio range. It’s another way for science presentations to be all-inclusive. See this link for details:
https://astronify.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
There’s various settings to change the duration of the notes and the mean frequency, etc.
As a first look, I downloaded the visual observations of chi Cygni for 2020-2024 from the BAA VSS database (see the attached plot) and ran them through Astronify code to sonify the data, creating the attached wav file. Some variable stars sound harmonic and pleasing, others sound discordant.
Chatting with the speaker and Lyn Smith we envisioned a ‘solar symphony’ from sunspot MDF data, also a sonified ‘meteor year’, with low frequency Taurids and high frequency Leonids.
Sonification is a nice option for presenters, although please use it sparingly and where appropriate.
Alex.
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Hi Alex,
yes it was an interesting presentation. I had tried sonification of my magnetometer data using a package called Strauss in the past, but was inspired to try Astronify.
Attached is a sonification of the magnetometer data from the arrival of the CME on Friday afternoon through to midnight on he 11th. And a plot of the data in arbitrary normalised units.
Enjoy!
Callum
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Hi Callum,
Your audio really gives a strong impression of being in the midst of a solar storm! 🙂
Cheers,
Alex.
Hi,
I’ve never tried it but there is even a “sonification” option in VisualSpec…. might give it a go on one of my meteor spectra…
I imagine the solar sounds would have included some vlf recordings. To me these are the ultimate in “sound” observations.
In a similar vein to being in the midst of a solar storm, this recording I made about 10 years ago gives the impression of listening to an enormous number of birds chirping and screeching.https://youtu.be/L9WHaUxfKAM?feature=shared
It’s remarkable what’s there in the audio spectrum.
Cheers,
Bill.Really interesting. I was thinking the 29P outbursts would be good in Astronify.
https://britastro.org/section_information_/comet-section-overview/mission-29p-2/latest-lightcurve-plot-of-29p
MarkHi Mark,
I took the observations from the Mission 29P page, but it wasn’t straightforward, because some entries aren’t in chronological order and there’s also G, T and V estimates in there. I used the R mags but then the full set (2023 Aug – 2024 May) created a wav file much larger than the 4 MB file limit.
Anyway, a rough and ready wav file is attached, covering 29P from 2024 Jan 16 to May 18.
At the Greenock meeting Nick James suggested that Astronify provide a user-friendly interface, such as an online webpage, where users could upload a csv file containing ‘time’ and ‘flux’ data, and it would automatically generate the wav file. Additionally, users would be able to modify the median pitch, duration between notes, select log or linear flux, etc. A nice little project for someone with any spare time…
Cheers,
Alex.
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