The Sound of Saturn’s Rings

This wonderful video was posted by Jennifer Ouellette on Discovery News, and I just had to share it. The sounds are actual recordings picked up by the Cassini spacecraft. I have heard the eerie audio before, but never had previously seen it paired up with moving images from the mission. The radio emissions, called Saturn kilometric radiation, are generated along with Saturn’s auroras, or northern and southern lights. Cassini’s Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument takes high-resolution measurements that allow scientists to convert the radio waves into audio recordings by shifting the frequencies down into the audio frequency range.

You can hear the raw audio at this website from the University of Iowa. A physicist there, Don Gurnett, builds plasma wave receivers for NASA, and he’s been collecting recordings of space sounds from all the major missions, including Voyager I, Galileo, and Cassini.

These recording inspired composer Terry Riley to put together a suite of space music for the Kronos Quartet called “Sun Rings.” I had the opportunity to see a live performance, which combines live music, the sounds from space and images from space projected in the background, and it is quite striking. You can hear samples in this link from NPR. Riley has said, “Space is surely the realm of dreams and imagination and a fertile feeding ground for poets and musicians.”

Ouellete mentioned another piece of music inspired by Saturn’s rings. There is a new DVD now available featuring images of Saturn’s rings set a 10-minute-long pice called “Anillos” (“rings” in Spanish), composed by Grammy-nominated Cornell University music professor Roberto Sierra in 2008 for the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. You can hear samples of the music at this link, and if you like it, you can buy the “Anillos” DVD from Buffalo Street Books for $15, just by emailing [email protected].

Source: Discovery Space