You can literally hear this image clicked by James Webb Space Telescope 

Can you 'hear' an image? This sentence itself appears contradictory. We see images and hear sounds. But how can we hear images? Scientifically speaking, there is a process that uses audio to give users a perception of data. This is called sonification. The concept is interesting in itself but when you associate that with an image clicked by James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), it becomes all the more fascinating.

NASA has teamed up with scientists, musicians and a member of visually impaired community to carry out sonification of an image. It is an image of a nebula. More specifically Carina Nebula. Nebulas are nurseries of stars. New stars are born there.

The sonification of the image is aimed at aiding blind individuals to 'see' the image with help of sound.

“These compositions provide a different way to experience the detailed information in Webb’s first data. Similar to how written descriptions are unique translations of visual images, sonifications also translate the visual images by encoding information, like colour, brightness, star locations, or water absorption signatures, as sounds,” said Quyen Hart, a senior education and outreach scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a NASA press statement.

Check out the sonification in the video below

Musicians who were part of the project to sonify the image assigned different notes to each part of the image. There is a logic to this sonification. The brighter the light, the louder the sound. The frequency of the sound is determined by vertical position of the light in the image. For example, light positioned in the upper portion of the image has a higher note and that in the lower part of the image gets a lower note.

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