The scale of things

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Using the Theory of Relativity and BEER to Find Exoplanets
Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson | May 13, 2013


^ “Einstein’s planet,” formally known as Kepler-76b, is a “hot Jupiter” that orbits its star every 1.5 days. Its diameter is about 25 percent larger than Jupiter and it weighs twice as much. This artist’s conception shows Kepler-76b orbiting its host star, which has been tidally distorted into a slight football shape (exaggerated here for effect). The planet was detected using the BEER algorithm, which looked for brightness changes in the star as the planet orbits due to relativistic BEaming, Ellipsoidal variations, and Reflected light from the planet. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

A new method of detecting alien worlds is full of awesome, as it combines Einstein’s Theory of Relativity along with BEER. No, not the weekend beverage of choice, but the relativistic BEaming, Ellipsoidal, and Reflection/emission modulations algorithm. This new way of finding exoplanets was developed by Professor Tsevi Mazeh and his student, Simchon Faigler, at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and it has been used for the first time to find a distant exoplanet, Kepler-76b, informally named Einstein’s planet.

“This is the first time that this aspect of Einstein’s theory of relativity has been used to discover a planet,” said Mazeh.

The two most-most used and prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking for dimming stars).

The new method looks for three small effects that occur simultaneously as a planet orbits the star. A “beaming” effect causes the star to brighten as it moves toward us, tugged by the planet, and dim as it moves away. The brightening results from photons “piling up” in energy, as well as light getting focused in the direction of the star’s motion due to relativistic effects.

The team also looked for signs that the star was stretched into a football shape by gravitational tides from the orbiting planet. The star would appear brighter when we observe the “football” from the side, due to more visible surface area, and fainter when viewed end-on. The third small effect is due to starlight reflected by the planet itself.

“This was only possible because of the exquisite data NASA is collecting with the Kepler spacecraft,” said Faigler.


This graphic shows Kepler-76b’s orbit around a yellow-white, type F star located 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Although Kepler-76b was identified using the BEER effect (see above), it was later found to exhibit a grazing transit, crossing the edge of the star’s face as seen from Earth. Credit: Dood Evan.

Although scientists say this new method can’t find Earth-sized worlds using current technology, it offers astronomers a unique discovery opportunity. Unlike radial velocity searches, it doesn’t require high-precision spectra. Unlike transits, it doesn’t require a precise alignment of planet and star as seen from Earth.

“Each planet-hunting technique has its strengths and weaknesses. And each novel technique we add to the arsenal allows us to probe planets in new regimes,” said Avi Loeb from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who first proposed the idea of this planet-hunting method back in 2003.

Kepler-76b is a “hot Jupiter” that orbits its star every 1.5 days. Its diameter is about 25 percent larger than Jupiter and it weighs twice as much. It orbits a type F star located about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The planet is tidally locked to its star, always showing the same face to it, just as the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. As a result, Kepler-76b broils at a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Interestingly, the team found strong evidence that the planet has extremely fast jet-stream winds that carry the heat around it. As a result, the hottest point on Kepler-76b isn’t the substellar point (“high noon”) but a location offset by about 10,000 miles. This effect has only been observed once before, on HD 189733b, and only in infrared light with the Spitzer Space Telescope. This is the first time optical observations have shown evidence of alien jet stream winds at work.

The planet has been confirmed using radial velocity observations gathered by the TRES spectrograph at Whipple Observatory in Arizona, and by Lev Tal-Or (Tel Aviv University) using the SOPHIE spectrograph at the Haute-Provence Observatory in France. A closer look at the Kepler data also showed that the planet transits its star, providing additional confirmation.

The paper announcing this discovery has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available on arXiv.

Source: CfA

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Sun Erupts in First X-class Flares of 2013 | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Tuesday, May 14, 2013, at 2:01 PM


^ The three X-class flares of May 13/14, as seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Click to enhelionate. Photo by NASA/SDO

[UPDATE (May 15, 02:15 UTC): Make that four: That spot just blew out a fourth flare, this one topping out at X1.2.]

The Sun has been a bit quiet lately, with only minor hiccups of activity here and there. But that changed on May 13, when a sunspot just over the Sun’s limb erupted in the most powerful flare so far this year.

But it didn’t stop there: A few hours later it flipped out again, blasting out an even more power flare… and then again a third flare erupted, more powerful than the last two!



NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the whole thing, so I put together a short video showing the first two parts of this dramatic three-act play.

The scale of this is hard to grasp. Flares are caused when the magnetic field lines of the Sun get tangled up, and then snap, releasing their energy. The amount of energy is beyond staggering: It’s equivalent to millions of nuclear weapons all going off simultaneously! Astronomers classify flares according to the energy released; B and C are the lowest, then M, and then X-class flares at the top of the scale. Each class is a factor of ten more powerful than the one below.


^ The flare on May 14 sent out a huge blast of material called a coronal mass ejection, heading (happily) away from Earth. Photo by NASA/SDO and NASA/ESA/SOHO

These three were all X-class, and in order they were X1.7, X2.8 and X3.2. That means the last of the three was nearly twice as powerful as the first. All three triggered coronal mass ejections, huge expulsions of billions of tons of material out into space. The last one was so big it will probably catch up with and ram into the earlier two.

I’ll note none of this presents a danger to us on Earth (though we have space probes that may catch the edge of these blasts, and the operators have been notified). But it’s a good reminder that the Sun is still on the low side of its 11 year peak. It’s been relaxed lately, but that doesn’t mean it won’t freak out again over the next few months.

And that’s exactly why we study it. Big eruptions can damage satellites, interrupt communications, and even cause blackouts on Earth. Our eyes in the sky give us a better view, and more importantly, advance warning. Hopefully, if the Sun does decide to aim something our way, we’ll have enough time to deal with it. Satellites can be shut down, power can be shunted through different parts of the grid, and damage minimized. The Earth’s atmopshere protects us fragile humans on the surface, too. But our electronics are expensive, our economy depends on them, and we have to be aware of the Sun’s potential influence on them.

Astronomy and space exploration can pay off, folks. Quite literally, in this case.

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Stunning Astrophotos Reveal the Importance of Dark Skies
Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson | May 14, 2013


^ The Milky Way and Aurora over Godafoss, waterfall of the gods, Iceland, by Stephane Vetter from France, the first place winner in Beauty of the Night Sky category, TWAN 2013 Earth & Sky Photo Contest.

The World at Night’s (TWAN) annual Earth & Sky photography contest showcases the stunning beauty of the night sky while highlighting the challenges of keeping our skies free from light pollution. TWAN has now announced the winners of this year’s contest, and the winning photos are simply breathtaking. This year’s theme of “Dark Skies Importance,” were judged in two categories: “Beauty Of The Night Sky” and “Against The Lights,” said Babak Tafreshi, the founder and director of TWAN,” and the winners were selected from submissions by photographers in about 45 countries.”

The selected images were judged to be those most effective in impressing the public on both how important and delicate the starry sky is as an affecting part of our nature, and also how bad the problem of light pollution has become.

Tafreshi added that “the amazing number of eye-catching entries from across the world tells how public attention to night sky is growing as well as interest to sky photography and we are very pleased if TWAN has a role on this increasing awareness.”

The overall contest winner and first prize in the Beauty Of The Night Sky category is our lead image, taken by Stephane Vetter of France, for his March 2013 panoramic photo “Sky Above Godafoss” of aurora and the Milky Way over the “Waterfall of the Gods” in Iceland.

See more winners and more information about the contest below:

The first prize in Against The Lights category goes to Andreas Max Böckle of Austria for his photo “Under the Hood” taken from overlooking the city of Salzburg in a moonlit night: Stars over Salzburg, Austria by Andreas Max Böckle, the first winner in Against the Lights category in TWAN 2013 Earth & Sky Photo Contest.

Stars over Salzburg, Austria by Andreas Max Böckle, the first winner in Against the Lights category in TWAN 2013 Earth & Sky Photo Contest.

David Malin, one of the judges and a world-known pioneer in scientific astrophotography said, “The 685 entries the judges examined (more than twice than the 2012 judged images) represent some of the best TWAN-style photographs ever gathered together in one place… I feel privileged to have seen so many beautiful images in such a short time!”

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Orion’s Secret Fire Dance
Universe Today, Tammy Plotner | May 15, 2013


^ In this image, the submillimetre-wavelength glow of the dust clouds is overlaid on a view of the region in the more familiar visible light, from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The large bright cloud in the upper right of the image is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

The Great Orion Nebula has captivated observers for at least four hundred years, but the ancient Mayans may have known about its secrets long before then. According to legend, the nebula might have been the smoke situated between the “Three Hearthstones” and the light of the emerging stars seen as the very embers of creation itself. Now the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile has revealed what we cannot see. At wavelengths too long for human vision, this new image shows us an ancient fire dance painted in colors of cold interstellar dust.

As we know, deposits of gas and interstellar dust are virtual star factories. However, the very material which creates stars also masks them. So how do we peer behind the veil? The answer is to observe at alternative wavelengths of light. In this case, the submillimetre wavelength reveals what our eyes cannot see… dust grains igniting the view, even though they are just a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. This makes the APEX telescope with its submillimetre-wavelength camera LABOCA, located at an altitude of 5000 metres above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes, the perfect instrument to play the tune for this cold fire dance.

Take a look around the picture. It’s just a small portion of a vast complex known as the Orion Molecular Cloud. Wafting across hundreds of light years space some 1350 light years away, this rich arena of hot young stars, cold dust clouds and bright nebula is the epitome of stellar creation. The image reveals the submillimetre-wavelength glow in shades of orange and it is combined with visible light for a total visual experience. Note deep ribbons, sheets and bubbles… These are the product of gravitational collapse and the effects of stellar winds. Powerful stellar processes are at work here. The atmospheres of the stars are crafting the clouds much the same way a gentle breeze swirls the smoke from a fire.


^ Credit: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), Digitized Sky Survey 2. Music: movetwo

As beautiful as it is, there is still science behind the imagery. Astronomers have employed the data taken with ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, along with the APEX information, to aid them in their search for early star formation. At this point in time, the researchers have been able to verify more than a dozen candidate protostars – objects which appear far brighter at longer wavelengths rather than short. It’s a triumph for the researchers. These new observations could well be the youngest protostars so far observed and it brings astronomers just one step closer to witnessing the moment when a star ignites.

Original Story Source: ESO News Release.

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The Tracks of Ships Are Written in the Sky | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Wednesday, May 15, 2013, at 8:00 AM

Here’s something I didn’t know happened: Under the right conditions, the exhaust from ships plying the ocean can form clouds, leaving tracks criss-crossing the sky.


^ Ships reveal their presense and path by making clouds that form behind them. Click to contrailenate. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE)

This image, taken by NASA’s Earth-observing Terra satellite on Apr. 20, 2013, shows some of these long thin clouds (called ship tracks) in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska. Actually, there’s quite a bit going on here, and the ship tracks are just one part.

The tracks themselves can be seen as the mostly linear clouds all over the bottom of the picture. What happens is that the ships emit aerosols—tiny particles—in their exhaust. Water vapor in the air condenses around the particles, forming tiny spheres of water: cloud droplets. As the ship moves, these trace its path like airplane contrails, and over time the ship tracks can have their shape bent by winds.

The curlicue in the lower center caught my eye, and I knew right away what it was: part of a von Kármán vortex, a spinning parcel of air downwind from an obstacle like an island. Sure enough, if you look above the vortex you’ll find another, and then above that a tiny island, a patch of greenish-brown poking through a clear spot in the clouds. Well, tiny on this scale: That’s Tanaga Island, and it’s actually over 40 kilometers (24 miles) long! The whole image shown here is about 650 km (400 miles) across—roughly the size of my home state of Colorado—and it’s only one part of an even bigger shot.

I was also drawn to the ripples to the east (right) of Tanaga, and it turns out those are not due to ships at all, but are still called “ship wave clouds”! That’s because of their resemblance to the wake of a boat, and they form in a similar way. Winds blowing past volcanoes in the island chain whip around and over the peaks. As they do, they form that V-shape like foamy water off the bow of a ship (hence the name). As the air flows past, it also rises and falls like the ripples in a sheet. The air at the top of the ripples is cooler, and the water can condense to form clouds. At the troughs, the air is warmer and clearer. If the air were dry you’d never see those ripples, but the water vapor in them makes the pattern visible.

I am endlessly fascinated by clouds and the patterns they make. I’m spoiled living in Boulder; the Rocky Mountains are upwind, and constantly sculpting the clouds into amazing shapes. But it also helps to have an eye in the sky, too, looking down on us and sending back amazing and beautiful pictures like this one.

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Kepler Planet-Finding Mission in Jeopardy | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Wednesday, May 15, 2013, at 5:22 PM


^ A reaction wheel failure on the Kepler spacecraft may prevent the observatory from continuing its mission to find other planets. Artwork by NASA/Kepler

Last week, the Kepler spacecraft software detected an abnormal drift in the pointing of the observatory. As it was designed to do, the software sent the spacecraft into safe mode (putting the observatory to sleep, so to speak) and alerted engineers on the ground. When Kepler was restarted, Reaction Wheel 4 wouldn’t start back up. These wheels are needed to point the telescope; it needs three for normal operation. Reaction Wheel number 2 failed in 2012, so Kepler’s been running on that minimum of three for many months. With this new wheel problem, the mission itself is in danger.

It’s not clear how much danger, though. Once they initially found the wheel hadn’t restarted, engineers put full torque on its motor, but the wheel still wouldn’t move. In a press conference today, NASA said engineers are working on ways of possibly restarting the wheel, including trying to run it backwards, or starting and stopping it several times.

Even if the wheel doesn’t start back up, engineers think they can use the thrusters on board the spacecraft to help point it. That’s a pretty crude method and far from ideal, but may be possible to extend the mission.

I’m not willing to say the primary mission is over for sure, but this sounds pretty bad. With only two wheels, pointing won’t be as accurate. If they can get Reaction Wheel 4 back up, great! If not, well, we’ll see.


^ Artwork depicting an exoplanet
transiting its star. Artwork by
ESO/L. CalçadaKepler was launched in 2009, and its mission is to look for planets orbiting other stars. It does this by staring about 150,000 stars at the same time, and carefully measuring their brightness. If a planet orbits the star, and the orbit is lined up so the planet passes directly in front of the star from our view, it will block a tiny bit of the star’s light. This dip is usually at most only about 1 percent of the total light, and can be far smaller—it depends on the size of the star and the size of the planet—so this is painstaking work.

Despite that, Kepler data have revealed hundreds of planets, and there are thousands more candidates; potential planets that have been detected but not yet confirmed. Kepler’s found planets more massive than Jupiter, systems with more than one Earth-sized planet in them, and ones smaller than Mercury. It’s also found planets in the habitable zones of their stars. Not only that, but it has four years of data in its archives, so even if no more are ever taken, that’s a treasure trove of astronomical observations that will be studied for years to come.


^ The size of Kepler 37-b (middle) compared to Mercury (left) and our Moon (right). At this scale, the Earth would fill the picture; it's wider than all three of these worlds combined. Photo credits: Mercury: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington; Kepler-37b art: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle; Moon: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; compiled by Phil Plait

It’s entirely possible the data already taken contain the faint signal of an Earth-sized, Earth-mass planet orbiting a star at the right distance for liquid water to exist on it. Such a signal can be very difficult to tease out, but just waiting to be found.

Also, NASA is planning the next generation of planet-finding mission: TESS, for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, will consist of an array of four telescopes, sweeping a large area of the sky and examining more than 500,000 stars for planets. It’s scheduled for launch in 2017. In the meantime, there are several other observatories looking for exoplanets as well.

I’ll note that the Kepler mission was extended in 2012 after its primary run, and even if no more data are taken, it’s been by all counts wildly successful, increasing our knowledge hugely about planets orbiting other stars. While this potential loss of Kepler is cause for concern, it is by no means our last chance to search the Universe for other worlds. We’re just starting this exploration, and there are billions more planets out there to find.

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More Insight on How NASA Might Revive the Kepler Space Telescope
Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson | May 16, 2013


^ Artist concept of the Kepler telescope in orbit. Credit: NASA

The future of NASA’s Kepler space telescope mission is in doubt, NASA announced yesterday, as it suffered a failure of a second reaction wheel, losing its ability to precisely point to look for planets orbiting other stars. Reaction wheels enable the spacecraft to aim in different directions without firing thrusters, and the spacecraft needs at least three of the four wheels working to provide the ability to point precisely enough to continue the mission.

But, as we pointed out in our article yesterday, the Kepler team said there are still possibilities of keeping the spacecraft in working order, or perhaps even finding other opportunities for different science for Kepler, something that doesn’t require such precise pointing abilities.

“We’re not ready to call the mission down and out just yet,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, “but by any measure it’s been a spectacular mission.”

Space expert Scott Hubbard has provided additional insight on the possible ways that NASA could bring the spacecraft back online, and what planet hunters will do next if that’s not possible. Hubbard is a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford’s School of Engineering, and served as director of NASA Ames Research Center during much of the building phase of the Kepler space telescope. He also worked on the project alongside William Borucki, the Kepler science principal investigator at Ames and the driving force behind the effort, for the decades leading up to formal approval of the mission.

Standford University provided this conversation Hubbard:

Q: How big of a loss will it be if the Kepler space telescope can’t be repaired?

Hubbard: The science returns of the Kepler mission have been staggering and have changed our view of the universe, in that we now think there are planets just about everywhere.

It will be very sad if it can’t go on any longer, but the taxpayers did get their money’s worth. Kepler has, so far, detected more than 2,700 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, including many Earth-size planets that are within their star’s habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form.

Kepler has done what the program managers said it would do, and that is to give us an inventory of extrasolar planets. It completed its primary observation phase, and had entered its extended science phase. We’re already in the gravy train period – there’s still a year and a half’s worth of data in the pipeline that scientists will analyze to identify other candidate planets, and there will continue to be Kepler science discoveries for quite some time.


^ Kepler space telescope’s field of view. Credit: NASA

Q: How might NASA engineers go about getting Kepler functional again?

Hubbard: There are two possible ways to salvage the spacecraft that I’m aware of. One is that they could try turning back on the reaction wheel that they shut off a year ago. It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work.

The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability. I haven’t investigated it, but my impression is that it would require sending a lot more operational commands to the spacecraft.

Q: If neither of these options works, Kepler is still an amazing space instrument. Could it conduct other types of experiments?

Hubbard: People have asked about using it to find near-Earth objects, or asteroids. Kepler carries a photometer, not a camera, that looks at the brightness of stars, and so its optics deliberately defocus light from stars to create a nice spread of light on the detector, which is not ideal for spotting asteroids.

Whether or not it could function as a detector for asteroids is something that would have to be studied, but since it wasn’t built as a camera, I would say that I’m skeptical. That said, certainly between Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they’ve got the best people in the world working on it.


^ Visualization of Kepler’s planet candidates shown in transit with their parent stars. Credit: Jason Rowe/Kepler Mission/NASA

Q: What’s next for exoplanet hunters?

Hubbard: As I said earlier, there is still a year and a half’s worth of data in the pipeline to analyze to identify candidate planets, so there are still discoveries to be made.

It’s important to make clear, though, that in the original queue of missions aimed at finding life elsewhere, a mission like Kepler was a survey mission to establish the statistical frequency of whether these planets are rare or common. It lived the length of its prime mission, and was extremely successful during that time at achieving this goal. It has paved the way for additional missions, such as TESS – Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – and TPF – Terrestrial Planet Finder – which will continue the search for Earth-like exoplanets in the near future.

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RESOURCE

Georgia Institute of Technology has apparently accomplished a lot with regard to sonifying all kinds of stuff. This post, a piece I’ll call a press release, is appropriately tagged as ambiguous when compared to really clear writings on Georgia Tech’s Sonification Lab web pages.

Underscored highlights are examples of unclear or, let’s say, negligible expressions of musical and philosophical ideas within a context for sonification. You’ll note that one might not learn much about sonification from a press release; furthermore, a well studied musician would spot right away a writer who used music terms, unsuitably, while presuming the target audience.

Anyway, my bolded and underscored highlights remained; the behavior to highlight in the first place belabored common sense.


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Making Music With Real Stars: Kepler Telescope Star Data Creates Musical Melody
Georgia Institute of Technology | June 12, 2012 Atlanta, GA

Why stop at the dark side of the moon to make music when you can look thousands of light years into space? That’s what a team of Georgia Tech researchers have done, using data from two stars in our galaxy to create sounds for a national recording artist.

Over the years, researchers in Georgia Tech’s Sonification Lab (SonLab) have converted numerical data into sounds to analyze stock market prices, election results and weather data. When the reggae/rock band Echo Movement called wanting to turn the movements of celestial bodies into music, SonLab looked to the heavens.

“The Sonification Lab receives a lot of requests to convert scientific data into sound, but this one was truly unique,” said Bruce Walker, a professor in the Schools of Psychology and Interactive Computing. “It’s not often that we have a chance to help an actual star compose music.”

Although pitches, tempos and rhythms could be created and tweaked, the band insisted that the finished product remain true to all data and feature a musically appealing, “heavenly” sound. With those restrictions in place, the musicians and Walker’s team of students went to work with existing data gathered by NASA’s Kepler telescope. Focused on a binary star (Kepler 4665989), Kepler recorded its brightness levels for more than a year. The star dimmed and brightened each time its companion star crossed its path, providing varying brightness measurements.

“Those numerical values were loaded into our Sonification Sandbox software to create sequences of sonified musical pitches,” said Riley Winton, a psychology student and leader of the project. “The process put us on the right track. When the band reviewed it and requested timbres instead of pitches, we audified the data.”

In other words, the team played the varying brightness levels as waveforms to create a different sound. The lab then cleaned the signal and removed some of the ambient sound before sending audio pitches to the band. Echo Movement looped the sounds and composed them into a four-part harmony.

For the final step, the students used a different binary star (Kepler 10291683) to adjust the timbre even further by adding a tremolo effect. This created a shuddered, natural sound rather than a flat, computerized noise.

The final result [mp3] is a melody that will be used in the intro [mp3] of Echo Movement’s song “Love and the Human Outreach,” which will be released in September.

“People have made music with space sounds before, but largely using pulsars and space events that can be recorded in the radio spectrum. We wanted something completely off the chart,” said band member David Fowler, who was encouraged by Edna DeVore at the SETI Institute to look at the Kepler Mission. “Discovering planets around other stars is a relatively new science worthy of everyone’s attention and digs deep at the core of humanity’s most basic quest to orient itself in reality,” he said.

The Georgia Tech team will present the sonification process at the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) in Atlanta June 18 – 21, 2012.

The project’s goal, to create an authentic, aesthetic sound, was a success. The melody is further proof that sonification can be a valuable tool when working with large data sets.

“Sound is the best pattern recognition tool we have,” said Walker. “Instead of visually scanning through a long list of numbers, looking for patterns or random occurrences, sometimes it’s easier to create an audio file and listen for them. Very interesting patterns can often be discovered by using sound.”

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The final product, Love and the Human Outreach, by the American alternative-reggae band, Echo Movement, noted in the above press release.


^ Love and the Human Outreach | Echo Movement

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Highlights mine.

The Georgia Tech Sonification Lab

The Georgia Tech Sonification Lab is an interdisciplinary research group based in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Under the direction of Prof. Bruce Walker [a psych professor], the Sonification Lab focuses on the development and evaluation of auditory and multimodal interfaces, and the cognitive, psychophysical and practical aspects of auditory displays, paying particular attention to sonification. Special consideration is paid to Human Factors in the display of information in “complex task environments,” such as the human-computer interfaces in cockpits, nuclear powerplants, in-vehicle infotainment displays, and in the space program.

Since we specialize in multimodal and auditory interfaces, we often work with people who cannot look at, or cannot see, traditional visual displays. This means we work on a lot of assistive technologies, especially for people with vision impairments. We study ways to enhance wayfinding and mobility, math and science education, entertainment, art, music, and participation in informal learning environments like zoos and aquariums.

The Lab includes students and researchers from all backgrounds, including psychology, computing, HCI [Human-Computer Interaction], music, engineering, and architecture. Our research projects are collaborative efforts, often including empirical (lab) studies, software and hardware development, field studies, usabilty investigations, and focus group studies.

Summary of Key Research Areas

1. Sonification and auditory displays.
Determining which type of display is appropriate for a system, and then how best to implement it, is a growing challenge, especially as devices continue to shrink in size. The use of sound to communicate information has become more common, but there is relatively little theory to guide auditory display designers. Therefore, we study the perception and understanding of auditory displays, and we are helping to build up both the theoretical and practical foundations. In particular, our lab studies sonification, the use of sound to display and analyze scientific data. Our findings about how listeners interpret these auditory graphs is leading to more effective data exploration tools, for both sighted and visually impaired researchers and students.

2. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in Non-Traditonal Interfaces.
In situations where there is not necessarily a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc., what are the best ways to create a successful interaction between the user and the system? Designers need to “think outside the box” and utilize novel interaction style, non-traditional interfaces, and make use of all sensory modalities. Certainly auditory displays fit into this category. However, tactile, voice, and vibration interfaces also apply, as do many others we have not even imagined yet!

3. Psychological and social factors in the adoption and use of technology.
When first introduced, any new technology will raise both fears and excitement. What are the traits that help a new technology to become accepted and adopted by users so much that it becomes part of our daily lives (e.g., telephones, microwaves, electronic mail)? I am beginning to examine the many factors that contribute to the evolution of a device from “new technology” to “household appliance”.

Our research has been, or currently is funded, by numerous grants from the NSF [National Science Foundation], NIDRR [National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research], Wireless RERC [Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center], US Army, Nokia, Temco [Texas Engineering & Manufacturing Company], and others. We are very appreciative for this support.

NEWS: We have a variety of projects that need grad students to lead research, programmers of all types for implementation, HCI students to conduct studies, and undergraduate research assistants. Some projects have funding, so paid work is a possibility; other opportunities are intended to be completed first for course credit (special topics, etc.) in CS, Psych, or HCI. See the Opportunities page for more information.

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The Overview very well states, in my opinion, the meaningfulness of sonified data for a casual, random listener or a client. From what I’ve seen online, Georgia Institute of Technology, perhaps more than other U.S. universities, has evidentially accomplished much over the years in areas of sonification, visual and aural; for example, music, the scales of.

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School of Psychology - Georgia Institute of Technology
Individual Differences and Training

Overview

Sonifications and auditory graphs need to be designed so that the intended listener understands the message, or gleans patterns from the data. Our research has shown that the mapping of the data to sound matters, as does the actual type of data being displayed. In addition, and very importantly, there are differences between individuals in terms of how people perceive what they hear. There are transient (or state) attributes of an individual, such as their state of alertness, level of training, motivation, and so on. And there are longer term (trait) variables, such as their experience with sound, or their education in a particular domain. Another important factor is their experience with visual graphs, and a key variable seems to be whether a listener has vision loss or not, and if so, when they lost their vision.

Our research in this topic uses a variety of methods, ranging from psychophysics like magnitude estimation, to auditory graphs interpretation studies, to training studies.

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Super-Bright Explosion Seen on the Moon
Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson | May 17, 2013


^ A bright flash on the Moon on March 17, 2013 when a boulder-sized asteroid hit the lunar surface.

If you were looking up at the Moon on March 17, 2013 at 03:50:55 UTC, you might have seen one of the brightest “lunar flashes” ever witnessed. And it would have been visible with just the naked eye.

“On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before.”

The scientists estimate that the flash came from a 40 kg meteoroid measuring 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide hitting the Moon, likely traveling about 90,000 km/hr (56,000 mph.) The resulting explosion packed as much punch as 5 tons of TNT.

(FYI, lunar meteors hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that they don’t require an oxygen atmosphere to create a visible explosion. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site.)

The crater could be as wide as 20 meters. The scientists for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are hoping to image the impact site the next time the spacecraft passes over the area. It should be relatively easy to spot, and lunar scientists are always on the lookout for recent impacts. Additionally, comparing the size of the crater to the brightness of the flash would give researchers a valuable “ground truth” measurement to validate lunar impact models.

Were you observing the Moon that night? Universe Today’s David Dickinson pointed out to me that it is quite possible an amateur could have caught it; however no amateur images have surfaced yet. The Moon would’ve been a waxing crescent and visible to the Pacific region and US West Coast at the time. If you have archived images or video, it might be worth a look. And we’d love to hear from you if you happened to catch anything! NASA said the impact site would have glowed like a 4th magnitude star for about one second.


^ These false-color frames extracted from the original black and white video show the explosion in progress. At its peak, the flash was as bright as a 4th magnitude star. Credit: NASA



During the past 8 years, Cooke and a team of NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface.

Ron Suggs, an analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center, was the first to notice the March 17th impact in a digital video recorded by one of the monitoring program’s 14-inch telescopes. “It jumped right out at me, it was so bright,” he said.

During the 8 years of observations, the team has found that the flashes on the Moon are more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year.

Since the monitoring program began in 2005, NASA’s lunar impact team has detected more than 300 strikes, most orders of magnitude fainter than the March 17th event. Statistically speaking, more than half of all lunar meteors come from known meteoroid streams such as the Perseids and Leonids. The rest are sporadic meteors–random bits of comet and asteroid debris of unknown parentage. Cooke believes the lunar impact might have been part of a much larger event.


^ NASA’s lunar monitoring program has detected hundreds of meteoroid impacts. The brightest, detected on March 17, 2013, in Mare Imbrium, is marked by the red square. Credit: NASA

“On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth,” he said. “These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt.”

This means Earth and the Moon were pelted by meteoroids at about the same time.

“My working hypothesis is that the two events are related, and that this constitutes a short duration cluster of material encountered by the Earth-Moon system,” said Cooke.

One of the goals of the lunar monitoring program is to identify new streams of space debris that pose a potential threat to the Earth-Moon system. The March 17th event seems to be a good candidate.

Source: Science@NASA

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Lunar Hook Shot | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Sunday, May 19, 2013, at 8:00 AM

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a cool close-up picture of the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (or LRO), and this one is too nifty not to share:


^ Aftermath of a lunar impact: fans of dust stripe the Moon's surface. Photo by NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

What you’re looking at is a region about a kilometer (0.6 miles) across not far from an impact crater—the actual crater is off the frame, below and to the left. Probably a billion years ago or so, something the size of a house slammed into the Moon, carving out a crater a few hundred meters across.

When it did, several hundred thousand tons of lunar surface were blasted out of the hole. Erupting into the sky, it spread out in all directions, including straight up, forming a huge plume. This superheated material expanded outward, blowing like a wind on the airless surface. When the dust literally settled, it formed hundreds of linear striations, all pointing back to the crater. And now, today, we see an echo of that event, strewn across the surface.

This crater is located pretty far north, so the Sun is low to the horizon. That makes long shadows, and accentuates the topography of the local terrain. You can really see all the bumps and wiggles of the surface, and those long narrow fingers are obvious.

This image is one part of a much longer stripe of lunar surface seen by LRO. While I was perusing it, I actually smiled in delight when I zoomed in and saw this:


^ Rock and roll, baby! Photo by NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

That white spot is a boulder a few meters in size. You can see its shadow going off to the upper right. But do you see that curved dotted line, a J-shape that ends at the boulder? That’s its track in the surface! The boulder looks like it rolled, moving from the lower left to the upper right, and then took a right-handed hook before coming to rest. If you look carefully, you’ll see that just before it stopped rolling it was on the upper left edge of a small depression, and then rolled into it. The dashed pattern in the track is probably due to irregularities in the shape of the rock as it rolled.


^ That rolling rock is about the
size of a truck. Photo by NASA/
GSFC/Arizona State University I love pictures like this! It shows the imprint (literally) of motion, in a landscape that appears forever frozen in time. Inset here is another such image from a bigger rock, where the track and shadows from other rocks are easier to see as well. The path of the rock gently curves as it follows the local curve of the ground.

All of these scenes can be found in the high-res image from LRO, and I invite you to take a look for yourself and see what you can discover. It’s amazing to think that we can sit in the luxury of our home environment here on Earth, and peruse pictures of the Moon taken by a probe that’s been orbiting our nearest neighbor for the past four years now, pictures which have a resolution of one meter per pixel.

We already live in the future, and it’s brought to you by SCIENCE.

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Galaxies Are Weird and Weirdly Beautiful | Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy | Monday, May 20, 2013, at 11:51 AM

Galaxies, on the whole, are very pretty. I find that interesting, actually; we didn’t evolve to see galaxies with our naked eyes, and they exert no selective pressure on us to breed, so when we find them so attractive it must be coincidence. Their shape, color, and structure just so happen to fit our definition of beauty. Appreciating the art of the Universe is a collateral benefit of evolution.

And then there’s this galaxy, prosaically named J125013.50+073441.5 (after its coordinates on the sky). I have to admit I’m admiring its strange appeal.


^ The strange and lovely wreckage of a cosmic collision. Click to galactinate. Photo by ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Hayes

What an odd thing! It’s located about 500 million light years away, and has clearly suffered a massive collision—while it does have spiral arms, the overall structure is a mess, indicating some large disturbance happened not too long ago. Most likely another galaxy came along, and the mutual gravity of the two drew them together, creating chaos in their structures. There’s no other nearby galaxy in the image, so I suspect the two wound up merging, and we’re catching it a few hundred million years after the event. The ring in the center and the small straight spurs around it are relatively common features seen in the aftermath of collisions as well, formed by the gravitational interaction of one galaxy as it plunges into another.

The image, taken using Hubble Space Telescope, is rather unusual, spanning a wide range of wavelengths of light. It’s a composite of three observations, one in the ultraviolet (shown as blue in the image), one in visible light which accentuates normal starlight (shown as green), and near-infrared which highlights dust (red).

Ultraviolet light is emitted by young, massive, hot stars (and the gas surrounding them, lit by the intense radiation), and those tend to be born in spiral arms. That’s why the arms look blue. There’s so much ultraviolet light being emitted, so much star formation going on, that J1250 is labeled a “starburst galaxy”—again, that tends to be an effect of galaxy collisions, when massive clouds of gas slam into each other, collapse, and furiously form stars. The dust is all over the place, and really does look like it was stirred up by the collision. Dust is actually made of complex organic (carbon chain) molecules, created when stars are born and when they die.

< The galaxy J082354.96—”Cinderella’s Slipper”—which is also a part of the LARS observations. Photo by ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Hayes

In the Hubble release for this image, they mention this galaxy was observed as part of the Lyman Alpha Reference Sample research; a survey to look at galaxies that emit a lot of a special kind of ultraviolet light called Lyman Alpha. As it happens, I wrote about this survey recently when Hubble released a spectacular image of another targeted galaxy, which I think should be called Cinderella’s Slipper.

The survey is helping astronomers understand galaxy formation and evolution by looking at nearby galaxies that can be used as models for far more distant ones. Closer ones are easier to study, while more distant ones may appear only as dots. The closer ones allow us to separate out various features (like the center of the galaxy versus an extended halo of gas) that are unresolved in the more distant galaxies. It’s a clever idea, and very useful for understanding what galaxies were like when the Universe was much younger.

And it does provide us with a bit of eye candy along with that nutritional brain fodder, too. I’m not an evolutionary biologist, so I’m no expert in the whys and wherefores of our appreciation of the beauty of the Universe. But I do know what looks lovely to me, and I also know that the science behind that beauty adds to it, giving it depth and personality. Art is always supplemented by the knowledge of how it came to be…especially when it’s on a grand a scale as the cosmos itself.

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The sounds heard in the mp3’s linked in Mr. King’s article below are what I describe as music of the Universe, which can be often unpleasant listening for many people. Myself not included. What is also music of the Universe are (aural) sonifications of raw, numerical data prior to further manipulation by replacing sounds with pitches from any one of a number of familiar and pleasant musical scales that have evolved with humans in any culture, on any continent, in any era.

If you’ll listen closely, you’ll hear rhythms in each of the six mp3’s in the following article. If I may be so bold, those rhythms may not be distinguished as exact patterns common in, for instance, sounds of Western pop culture music: the Universe doesn’t know Western pop culture’s rhythms. And, I don’t think the Universe distinguishes rhythms in our walks, or rhythms in our dances, or our rhythmic heart beats, or rhythms in our conversation, or that humans exist, in the first place . Now, there’s a thought.

Well, I’ve gone way off topic! So, please…

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Put The Aurora Borealis In Your Ear
Universe Today, Bob King | May 20, 2013


^ A rural location is ideal for listening to the subtle sounds of the aurora with a VLF radio. Just turn it on, don the earphones on and hold the unit skyward. Credit: Bob King

Do the aurorae make sounds? That’s been a subject of discussion — and contention — among people who watch the sky. While most of us will never hear the aurora borealis directly, there’s help out there in the form of a little handheld radio. It’s called a VLF receiver and guarantees you an earful the next time the aurora erupts.


^ High-speed electrons and protons buzzing along Earth’s magnetic fields lines emit very low frequency radio waves that human ears can here with a VLF receiver. Credit: Bob King

Despite seeing hundreds of northern light displays ranging from mild to wild, I’ve yet to actually hear what some describe as crackles and hissing noises. There is some evidence that electrophonic transduction can convert otherwise very low frequency (VLF) radio waves given off by the aurora into sound waves through nearby conductors. Wire-framed eyeglasses, grass and even hair can act as transducers to convert radio energy into low-frequency electric currents that can vibrate an object into producing sound. Similar ‘fizzing’ sounds have been recorded by meteor watchers that may happen the same way.


^ Laboratory tests reveal that a surprising variety of substances, including frizzy hair and vegetable matter, can act as radio-to-audio VLF transducers. Credit: NASA

Imagination may be another reason some folks people hear auroras. Things that move often make sounds. A spectacular display of moving lights overhead can trick your brain into serving up an appropriate soundtrack. Given that the aurora is never closer to the ground than 50 miles, the air is far too thin at this altitude to transmit any weak sound waves that might be produced down to your ears.

If you’re like me and hard of auroral hearing, a small VLF (very low frequency) radio receiver will do the job nicely. This handheld device converts very low frequency radio waves produced from the interaction of the solar electrons and protons with the Earth’s magnetic field into sounds you can listen to with a pair of headphones.


^ The battery-operated WR-3 VLF (Very Low Frequency) receiver with headphones for tuning into sounds “natural” radio broadcast by planet Earth. Credit: Bob King

We’re used to waves of light which are very, very short, measuring in the millionths of an inch long. The pigments in our retinas convert these waves into visible images of the world around us. Radio waves given off by auroras and other forms of natural ‘Earth energy’ like lightning range from 19 to 1,800 miles long or longer. To bring them within range of human hearing we need a radio receiver. I fire up a little unit called a WR-3 I purchased back in the mid-1990s. The components are housed in a small metal box with a whip antenna and powered by a 9-volt battery. The on-off switch also controls the volume. Plug in a set of headphones and you’re ready to listen. That’s all there is to it.


^ The magnetosphere of the Earth is enormous bubble of magnetism that surrounds our planet. It’s created through the interaction of the solar wind (yellow lines) and Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetosphere acts as a shield to protect us from dangerous radiation in space. Earth’s magnetic field lines are shown in concentric purple ovals, pushed on by pressure from the Sun and elongated on the side facing sway from the Sun. Credit: NASA

The receiver picks up lots of things besides aurora including a big ‘unnatural’ hum from alternating or AC current in power lines and home appliances. Turn one on in your house and you’ll immediately hear a loud, continuous buzz in the headphones. You’ll need to be at least a quarter mile from any of those sources in order to hear the more subtle music of the planet.


^ Lightning produces a great variety of natural radio sounds – sferics, tweeks and whistlers – you can hear with a VLF radio receiver. Credit: Bob King

I drive out to a open ‘radio quiet’ rural area, turn on the switch and raise the antenna to the sky. Don’t stand under any trees either. They’re great absorbers of the low frequency radio energy you’re trying to detect. What will you hear? Read on and click the links to hear the sound files.

* Sferics. The first thing will be the pops, crackles and sizzles of distant lightning called sferics which are similar to the crackles on an AM car radio during a thunderstorm.

* Tweeks. Lightning gives off lots of energy in the long end of the radio spectrum. When that energy gets ducted through the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere over distances of several thousand miles, it emits another type of sound called ‘tweeks’. These remind me of Star Wars lasers or dripping water. Flurries of tweeks have an almost musical quality like someone plucking the strings of a piano.

* Whistlers and Whistler Clusters. When those same lightning radio waves enter Earth’s magnetosphere and interact with the particles there, they can cycle back and forth between the north and south geomagnetic poles traveling tens of thousands of miles to create whistlers. Talk about an eerie, futuristic sound. After their long journey, the higher frequency waves arrive before those of lower frequency causing the sound to spread out in a series of long, descending tones. The sound may also take you back to those old World War II movies when bombs whistled through the air after dropping from the hatch of a B-17. Tweeks are very brief; whistlers last anywhere from 1/2 to 4 seconds or longer.

* Dawn Chorus. Sometimes you’ll hear dozens of whistlers, one after the other. When conditions are right, a VLF receiver can pick up disturbances in Earth’s magnetic bubble spawned by auroras called ‘chorus’ or ‘dawn chorus’. Talk about strange. Who would have guessed that solar electrons spiraling along Earth’s magnetic field lines would intone the ardor of frogs or a chorus of birds at dawn? And yet, there you have it.

* More Dawn Chorus: On a good night, and especially when the northern lights are out, it’s a magnetospheric symphony. Thunderstorms thousands of miles away provide a bounty of crackles and tweeks with occasional whistlers. Listen closely and you might even hear the froggy voice of the aurora rising and falling with a rhythm reminiscent of breathing.


^ The crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus accompanied a spectacular aurora over Lake Superior in Duluth, Minn. last July. With solar activity on the upswing and solar maximum predicted for the fall, auroras are more likely than ever in 2013. Credit: Bob King

If you’re interested in listening to VLF and in particular the aurora, basic receivers are available through the two online sites below. I’ve only used the WR-3 and can’t speak for the others, but they all run between $110-135. One word of warning if you purchase – don’t use one when there’s a lightning storm nearby. Holding a metal aerial under a thundercloud is not recommended!

* WR-3 VLF receiver from Stephen McGreevy
* North Country Radio ELF Earth Receiver

More on natural radio can be found HERE. Things to keep in mind when considering a purchase are whether you have access to an open area 1/2 mile from a power line and away from homes. You’ll also need patience. Many nights you’ll only hear lightning crackles from distant storms thousands of miles away peppered by the occasional ping of a tweet. Whistlers may not appear for weeks at a time and then one night, you’ll hear them by the hundreds. But if you regularly watch the sky, it’s so easy to take the radio along and ‘give a listen’ for some of the most curious sounds you’ll ever hear. How astonishing it is to sense our planet’s magnetosphere through sound. Consider it one more way to be in touch with the home planet.

For more on natural radio including additional sound files I invite you to check out Stephen P. McGreevy’s site.

[Hammer of Los]

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When 46.9 billion years old, look as good you will not.

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