8:28 The James Webb Space Telescope reveals a universe of sights and sounds
It is the universe as we have never experienced it before. The James Webb Space Telescope is sending back incredible images of deep space that advanced scientists believe will “change astronomy forever.”
It’s not just that we can see space and time billions of years ago. The magic is that we can see anything.
While its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, provided some incredible views, Webb, which was developed in collaboration with NASA and the Canadian and European space agencies, is able to look even further back in time and show us more details about what lies beyond planet Earth. .
Read more: The James Webb Telescope shows Neptune like you’ve never seen it before
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The James Webb Telescope shows Neptune like you’ve never seen it before
Take the recent release of the Pillars of Creation that was first captured in 1995 by Hubble. In the original image of the area, which is thought to be a star-forming part of the galaxy, pillars of gaseous clouds that look like long fingers reach into the sky.
What we couldn’t see before, and what the Webb Telescope now reveals, are all the stars hidden behind the gas.
That’s because Webb sees infrared light, which is normally invisible to humans.
Pillars of Creation. Captured by the Hubble Telescope (L) and the James Webb Telescope (R). Courtesy/NASA
By picking up infrared light, Webb can see objects so far away that the light they emit takes more than 13.5 billion years to reach Earth. This means that Webb is also like a time machine, as he can see what the universe was like when the earth and sun formed.
Read more: Cosmic cliffs, dancing galaxies: James Webb Telescope’s first photos dazzle
However, what Webb sends back is invisible to humans because we can’t see infrared light.
So it’s the job of Joe DePasquale and Alyssa Pagan, science imagers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, to translate Webb’s information into something visible.
Joe DePasquale, Senior Science Visuals Developer, creates images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
“We can’t see in the infrared. So there has to be some level of translation here. But we use physical meaning like real physical science to represent color,” Pagan told Global’s The New Reality.
Read more: James Webb Telescope sends back more amazing photos of distant galaxies
With the help of NASA scientists, Pagan and DePasquale break down the images into wavelengths. “We apply color according to those wavelengths. So the shortest wavelength filters we have, we use blue. And as we go to longer and longer wavelengths, we go to greens and then to the reds,” says DePasquale.
Science visuals developer Alyssa Pagan translates Webb’s infrared images into the colors we can see. Joey Ruffini/Global News
The end result is spectacular images like the mountainous-looking cosmic cliffs of the Carina Nebula captured by Webb.
“What we’re seeing when we look at these images is the raw material for life,” says DePasquale.
“We’re understanding the universe. We’re understanding ourselves. It’s very intriguing to get this new perspective, this bigger picture. A lot of people might say, ‘Oh, it makes me feel small,’ but I think for a lot of people, it really makes you to feel unified, connected, part of something that’s so grand and so beautiful. So you’re part of something great.”
An image of the Carina Nebula taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA
On their own, these images are spectacular, but now a Canadian scientist is adding another level of excitement to it all.
University of Toronto physicist and sonification specialist Matt Russo works with musician and friend Andrew Santaguida to add sound to the universe.
“The whole process was very natural because we’re combining things we’re passionate about—music, astronomy, math, computer programming, science, communication—all of those things into one package,” says Russo.
University of Toronto physicist and sonification specialist Matt Russo creates sounds for Webb’s images.
Their first effort to sonify an image was of the Trappist-1 solar system, first captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2017.
“[It] is an amazing solar system with seven Earth-sized planets. But they also happened to be locked in a musical pattern called orbital resonance. And that made it very natural to turn their movements into musical beats and notes,” says Russo.
They did the Trappist sonification for pure enjoyment; then NASA noticed.
“We just started sonifying different things that (NASA) had released and we’d send it to them and they’d start publishing it themselves. And eventually that led to us working for them professionally.”
Andrew Santaguida, a musician, works with Russo to sonify Webb’s footage. Brent Rose/Global News
Some of the sonics have been met with skepticism by the public, such as when they made the sound for a black hole.
“There’s a real sound wave detected in space in a galaxy cluster. And we were able to see the waves in the image, which means we can extract them and re-synthesize a sound,” says Russo.
“Some outlets would say it’s an actual recorded sound from a black hole, like if you had a microphone in space, which we know wouldn’t work for a number of reasons. So when we do the sonification, it’s important to present exactly as it is: that data converges into sound.”
Now Russo and Santaguida are working on the latest images from the James Webb telescope.
They take the spectacular images that DePasquale and Pagan have created and put them through a software system that Russo designed.
According to Russo, sometimes the sound of data can be a pleasant surprise. Other times they have to be a little more creative to figure out the best way to represent something in the image. Russo says they always try to be as scientifically accurate as possible.
“When we have a bit more musical input, we have to decide, for example, which musical instrument will be activated by the stars,” he adds. “People seem to have an intuition that the stars would make some kind of bell or bell.”
His sonifications of Webb’s images now allow people to see – and hear – the universe.
Sonifications offer those living with visual impairments the opportunity to experience new ideas about what is out there.
“The whole point is to communicate these interesting features of the image, through the sound,” says Russo.
Christine Malec, a member of Toronto’s visually impaired community and an arts and culture consultant, says that Russo and Santaguida’s sonifications allow her to conceptualize the images from the telescope, even though she is unable to see them.
“I never imagined experiencing astronomy in this way,” he tells The New Reality.
Christine Malec, is a member of the visually impaired community, helping NASA make Webb’s images more accessible.
“When I first experienced sonification, I felt it in a way that was not intellectual; it was sensory and visceral. So sometimes I wonder if that’s what sighted people experience looking at the night sky,” says Malec.
He now works regularly with Russo, Santaguida and NASA to help better translate Webb’s images for the benefit of people living with visual impairments.
Malec is excited about the future of space exploration and looks forward to the future of accessible content in the scientific realm.
“I wonder if I was a kid now and I found things like sonification and descriptions of images and astronomical things, would a career in STEM make more sense? Would it be more attractive? And I think the answer to that is yes. So I think that this is a very good reason for blind and low-vision children today to grow up with this as normal, I think that’s incredibly valuable.”