See and hear what our nearest star and mass nuclear fusion reactor has been up to in the past three years. The solar show is captured by the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission and new UV images and musical sonification.
The visuals are a timelapse animation of sun images, but it’s the sound that really brings that to life. Klaus Nielsen (DTU Space/Maple Pools) has built a practice in sonification and sound art, and worked with the European Space Agency to produce the data sonification and music. He writes CDM:
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released an audio-visual representation of solar activity over the last three years, pulling data from its Solar Orbiter probe, which it runs with NASA. If you’re more of an auditory learner than a visual one, this timelapse video is for you. (And, well, visual learners will probably love it, too!)
The audio was created using the process of sonification, whereby actual satellite data is being using to trigger sounds and control different parameters – much like a musical score.
ESA continues to use a generous Creative Commons license – something we’ve discussed with them here on CDM as it came into being – meaning you could also reinterpret these materials. Full credits and information below.
Essentially, what you’re seeing is solar flares as blue circles from the onboard x-ray spectrometer/telescope, overlaid on the UV imaging of the sun’s corona.
Check the orbiter’s page for more of what it’s been up to: Solar Orbiter
For instance:
Hearing and seeing space weather – why it matters
While we deal with the volatility of the climate here on Earth, it’s worth reflecting that space weather is a thing, too. A lot of the impact comes to us in pretty sky shows – recently, solar flares have produced dazzling Aurora Borealis views here on Earth’s surface as radiation causes ionization in the atmosphere, as with the X2.2 eruption in December.
These can impact Earth systems in ways you might notice, though. Interactions of coronal mass ejections, for instance, can damage power grids and even cause outages. Radiation can interfere with certain kinds of high-frequency radio and produce communication blackouts. We also now take for granted a whole lot of systems that work because of satellites, and they get bombarded with these events – and can even require navigational corrections as CMEs heat the atmosphere. There’s a great explanation from NASA.
It’s significant enough that the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains its own Space Weather Prediction Center.
Above: This velocity map, also called a ‘tachogram’, shows the line-of-sight speed and direction of movement of material at the Sun’s visible surface. Blue regions are moving towards the spacecraft and red regions are moving away. It was measured by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) onboard the Solar Orbiter spacecraft on 22 March 2023. -ESA / full story
- CREDIT
ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI Team- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Image processing by PHI Team members at MPS- LICENCE
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence
(content can be used under either licence)
Sonification as a scientific and public tool and art form
This kind of sonification has a great history, and it even is getting attention in scientific circles, as in this article for Nature Astronomy:
Sonification and sound design for astronomy research, education and public engagement
Zanella, A., Harrison, C.M., Lenzi, S. et al. Sonification and sound design for astronomy research, education and public engagement. Nat Astron 6, 1241–1248 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01721-z
One more:
The sound of science: Data sonification has emerged as possible alternative to data visualization
EMBO Rep (2024) 25: 3743 – 3747https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-024-00230-6
One leading advocate for sonifying space instruments was the late Donald A. Gurnett, a physics professor at the University of Iowa, who both championed recording instruments and shared and talked about sound. (See this collection – or for an exploration of “space sound” sonfications, this video.) Iowa even has its own (somewhat dated) space audio page.
You can catch more of Klaus’ music and sonifications. Klaus was a great choice for ESA; handing data sonifications to scientists without a musical background sometimes results in results that are harder to hear and understand. Take Klaus’ collab with ESA on the Earth’s magnetic field, by contrast – it’s deeply engaging both to your brain’s imaginative and perceptive powers, like being on a massive, creaking wooden ship floating through outer space:
Klaus’ music is wonderful – I love this ambient album, too.
More links:
Video details
At the start of this new year, close-up pictures and solar flare data that the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has been recording for more than three years. See and hear for yourself how the number of flares and their intensity increase, a clear sign of the Sun approaching the peak of the 11-year solar cycle.
This video combines ultraviolet images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona, yellow) taken by Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument, with the size and locations of solar flares (blue circles) as recorded by the Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) instrument. The accompanying audio is a sonification based on the detected flares and the spacecraft’s distance to the Sun.
Solar Orbiter moves on an elliptical path around the Sun, making a close approach to our star every six months. We can see this in the video from the spacecraft’s perspective, with the Sun moving closer and farther over the course of each year. In the sonification, this is represented by the low background humming that loudens as the Sun gets closer and becomes quieter as it moves further away. (There are some abrupt shifts in distance visible in the video, as it skips over dates where one or both instruments were inactive or collecting a different type of data.)
The blue circles represent solar flares: bursts of high-energy radiation of which STIX detects the X-rays. Flares are sent out by the Sun when energy stored in ‘twisted’ magnetic fields (usually above sunspots) is suddenly released. The size of each circle indicates how strong the flare is, with stronger flares sending out more X-rays. We can hear the flares in the metallic clinks in the sonification, where the sharpness of the sound corresponds to how energetic the solar flare is.
Many thanks to Klaus Nielsen (DTU Space / Maple Pools) for making the sonification in this video. If you would like to hear more sonifications and music by this artist, please visit: https://linktr.ee/maplepools
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA.Credits
Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & STIX, Klaus Nielsen (DTU Space/Maple Pools)
Acknowledgements: Data processing for video by Laura Hayes
License: CC BY-SA 3.0 or ESA Standard LicenseVideo credit slate
Solar Orbiter animation: ESA
Sun images: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI
Solar flare data: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/STIX
Data processing for video: Laura Hayes
Data sonification & music: Klaus Nielsen (DTU Space/Maple Pools)
Feature image at top:
[Taken by] Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. They reveal the Sun’s upper atmosphere, which has a temperature of around a million degrees Celsius. EUI helps scientists investigate the mysterious heating processes that occur in the Sun’s outer regions. Since EUI views the Sun in ultraviolet light, which is invisible to human eyes, the yellow colour is added to help us visualise our changing Sun.
ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team, ESA Standard Licence
Learn more
I’ve covered this – a lot. Enjoy!