Sonification of the first image of Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole! Just released! We made this to help people who are blind experience the groundbreaking image but everyone can enjoy it :) This is a radar-like scan moving clockwise from 12 o’clock. Brightness controls volume. Distance from the center controls the pitch. Material swilling closer to the event horizon moves faster and is mapped higher pitch. It’s a donut shape but you can hear 3 clear bright patches along the ring. This helped astronomers determine that we’re seeing the black hole nearly from above. You can also hear fainter light farther from the hole as super low frequencies (try on good speakers). We used binaural audio so if you listen on headphones it should sound like it’s moving right around your head. The black hole has a mass of 4 million suns. The size of the ring matches the predictions based on Einstein’s general relativity. This black hole is 1500 times smaller than M87*, the one imaged in 2019, but it’s 2000 times closer so the resolution is similar. Since this one’s so much smaller, the material takes only minutes rather than days to orbit which made it much harder to get a clear image. Sonification credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, @systemsounds (M. Russo, A.Santaguida) This sonification was done with the Chandra X-Ray Center and NASA’s Universe of Learning. #sonification #blackhole #blackholesound #milkyway #blackholeimage