A sonification of Kepler space telescope star data

Abstract

A performing artist group interested in including a sonification of star data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope in their next album release approached the Georgia Tech Sonification Lab for assistance in the process. The artists had few constraints for the authors other than wanting the end product to be true to the data, and a musically appealing “heavenly” sound. Several sonifications of the data were created using various techniques, each resulting in a different sounding representation of the Kepler data. The details of this process are discussed in this poster. Ultimately, the researchers were able to produce the desired sounds via sound synthesis, and the artists plan to incorporate them into their next album release.