NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars are about 5 light-years tall. The dark, finger-like feature at bottom right may be a smaller version of the giant pillars. The new image was taken with Hubble's versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3. The pillars are bathed in the blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green. Object Names: M16, Eagle Nebula, NGC 6611 Image Type: Astronomical Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

What does the universe sound like? Let’s listen.

January 6, 2022 Alan Cross 0 Comments 0 min read

First a little nerdery. Light and all forms of radiation are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s possible to shift their frequencies way, way down to where it becomes sound, making it possible for us to listen to everything from infrared to visible light to X-rays and gamma rays. Infrared, which is emitted at lower can be transposed into bass sounds while gamma rays can be heard as screaming treble. This conversion is called sonification.

ZMEScience.com provides us with how certain objects in the universe sound.