APOD: Play Saturn's Rings Like a Harp (2018 Apr 24)

[GoshOGeeOGolly]

Also looks like the UPC.

[Chris Peterson]

Also looks like the UPC.

Yes, it does. Although, to be a bit pedantic in the face of a light-hearted observation, barcodes are binary, while the ring image is not. If we were using this system to "play" a barcode, there would only be two tones.

[mattrusso]

Absolutely fantastic. I'm going to start playing much more of Russo's renditions.

For those who can't figure out how to enjoy the spectacle, perhaps THIS link could mollify them...

... for now.

Thank you Professor Russo.

Thanks HellCat! FYI, for the video you linked we used the notes of the harmonic series instead of the more pleasing major/minor harmony used in the app. Plenty more videos/apps on the way!

[Guest]

This is a fantastic post. It is very creative.

[mattrusso]

Absolutely fantastic. I'm going to start playing much more of Russo's renditions.

For those who can't figure out how to enjoy the spectacle, perhaps THIS link could mollify them...

... for now.

Thank you Professor Russo.

Also, forgot to mention, here is a video of the app in action, enjoy!

[Ann]

Also looks like the UPC.

Yes, it does. Although, to be a bit pedantic in the face of a light-hearted observation, barcodes are binary, while the ring image is not. If we were using this system to "play" a barcode, there would only be two tones.

That reminds me of the time when I (very briefly) visited a nunnery and listened to the nuns when they sang during one of their nine or so daily meetings to sing and pray.

That many meetings every day required a large repertoire of songs, and the nuns had solved the problems by setting music to every hymn in Psalms. But the music was of the simplest kind: It was indeed binary. Some syllables in every hymn were underlined, while the other syllables were not. A line below a syllable meant "Sing a higher note", and the lack of a line below a syllable meant "Sing a lower note".

Talk about singing the barcode to the grace of God! I listened with fascination to their music, which sounded so much worse than today's APOD!

Ann

[gustavomoretto@yahoo.com]

My favorite web page period.
But hey! Are the different piches proportional to the different brightness of the rings or at are they arbitrarily chosen by the technicians...
Big, big difference!
I'm a musician and I'm dying to knw the answer.

In the featured sonification, increasing brighter regions of Saturn's central B-ring play as increasingly higher pitched notes.

That is not the question I am asking. "higher pitches" means a change in the frequency of vibration. The intervals between all pitches heard in this example correspond to very specific frequency ratios; Octave 1:2, fifth 2:3, fourth 3:4 and so on. The question then is: did the astronomers find that relationship between the different brightness of the rings or did the technician who made the demo assign arbitrary values to the pitches to make them sound more pleasing? Big difference, and if the relationship is actually something else altogether it would be fascinating to hear it as it really is. Perhaps the Universe has something to teach us when it comes to music!

[Chris Peterson]

My favorite web page period.
But hey! Are the different piches proportional to the different brightness of the rings or at are they arbitrarily chosen by the technicians...
Big, big difference!
I'm a musician and I'm dying to knw the answer.

In the featured sonification, increasing brighter regions of Saturn's central B-ring play as increasingly higher pitched notes.

That is not the question I am asking. "higher pitches" means a change in the frequency of vibration. The intervals between all pitches heard in this example correspond to very specific frequency ratios; Octave 1:2, fifth 2:3, fourth 3:4 and so on. The question then is: did the astronomers find that relationship between the different brightness of the rings or did the technician who made the demo assign arbitrary values to the pitches to make them sound more pleasing? Big difference, and if the relationship is actually something else altogether it would be fascinating to hear it as it really is. Perhaps the Universe has something to teach us when it comes to music!

The ring intensity range is continuous and linear. The algorithm used must bin the brightnesses into widths corresponding to the desired intervals. Otherwise this would sound more like a Theremin than a harp. Here's what the histogram looks like.

[mattrusso]

My favorite web page period.
But hey! Are the different piches proportional to the different brightness of the rings or at are they arbitrarily chosen by the technicians...
Big, big difference!
I'm a musician and I'm dying to knw the answer.

In the featured sonification, increasing brighter regions of Saturn's central B-ring play as increasingly higher pitched notes.

That is not the question I am asking. "higher pitches" means a change in the frequency of vibration. The intervals between all pitches heard in this example correspond to very specific frequency ratios; Octave 1:2, fifth 2:3, fourth 3:4 and so on. The question then is: did the astronomers find that relationship between the different brightness of the rings or did the technician who made the demo assign arbitrary values to the pitches to make them sound more pleasing? Big difference, and if the relationship is actually something else altogether it would be fascinating to hear it as it really is. Perhaps the Universe has something to teach us when it comes to music!

Yes, Chris is right. We've binned the brightnesses of the pixels into 13 steps and mapped them to a chosen set of notes to communicate the relative brightness variations. I've played around with a more continuous version using an oscillator (really 256 steps) and might publish it in the future. There are real examples of musical frequency ratios within the full ring system though, as orbital resonances with some of Saturn's moons. For example, here is the scale played by Janus and Epimetheus: https://youtu.be/SsFZlSQdPWU.

The ultimate example of musical frequency ratios in astronomy is the TRAPPIST-1 system: https://youtu.be/WS5UxLHbUKc and there's an app for that too: http://www.system-sounds.com/trappist-sounds/play/

[bystander]

‘Milky Way Blues’
University of California, Santa Barbara | 2018 May 01

UCSB postdoctoral fellow Greg Salvesen takes data sonification to a new level with his Astronomy Sound of the Month website

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Sonification: Mark Heyer — Visualization: Greg Salvesen — Image: Robert Hurt
Data Credit: Anderson et al. (2011); Kalberla et al. (2005); Dame et al. (2001)

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Scientists often transform astronomy data in a way that allows for interpretation with visual plots such as color-coded graphs. UC Santa Barbara postdoctoral fellow Greg Salvesen went in a different direction. He decided to instead map raw data to sound to make the excitement of astronomy — a traditionally visual science — accessible to people with visual impairments.

Salvesen’s recently launched website, Astronomy Sound of the Month or AstroSoM (pronounced “Astro Psalm”), features different sounds produced from actual astronomy data, along with a brief explanation written by an astronomer. ...

For his latest feature, Salvesen collaborated with University of Massachusetts astronomy professor Mark Heyer to produce a piece called “Milky Way Blues” that allows listeners to “hear” how our galaxy rotates. Heyer created the sonification and Salvesen supplied the visualization, incorporating an existing image of our galaxy created by Robert Hurt of IPAC/Caltech. The combined efforts reduce complex data into visual and aural components that track the movement of gas through the galaxy. ...

UMass Amherst Astronomer Composes Galactic Jazz
University of Massachusetts, Amherst | 2018 May 03