Listen to the scary sounds coming from Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

Astronomers create visual representations of digital data collected by various NASA missions in space for humans to see what would otherwise be invisible. In addition to images, NASA has a huge catalog of creepy sonifications - astronomical data represented in audio form - including that of the beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy or Messier 51 (M51).

By taking actual observational data from telescopes such as Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, or the all-new James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers translate it into corresponding frequencies that are audible to the human ear.

This sonification of the Whirlpool Galaxy shared by NASA is from an observation made by the Chandra X-ray observatory - the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. Launched by Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999, is able to detect sources more than 20-times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope.

Listen to the scary sounds coming from the Whirpool Galaxy:

Sonification Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

M51 is located 31 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is nicknamed Whirlpool Galaxy because its face-on orientation to Earth reveals its wound-up spiral arms, which gives telescopes here a view of another spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, whose structure we cannot observe directly from our position within it, according to NASA.

The sonification begins at the top and moves radially around the image in a clockwise direction. Each wavelength of light in the image obtained from NASA telescopes in space (infrared, optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray) is assigned to a different frequency range. The sequence begins with sounds from all four types of light, but then separately moves through the data from Spitzer, Hubble, GALEX, and Chandra.

New scary movie intro just dropped! 🎃 This sonification of Whirlpool Galaxy Messier 51 is from an observation made by the @chandraxray observatory. #Halloween Learn more about Chandra HERE>> https://t.co/aI2fcgHqhh pic.twitter.com/a9ndzlZw5v

— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) October 28, 2022