SOUNDS OF JUPITER AND SATURN

When NASA’S Juno spacecraft crossed the boundary between interplanetary space and Jupiter’s magnetosphere in 2016, there was an abrupt change in the electric field measurements it recorded. In a Youtube video from NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory, these measurements were converted into sound waves, bringing out the dramatic nature of the change much more vividly than a conventional graphical representation.

More than a decade earlier, NASA released another striking audio clip, in this case captured by Cassini. This eerie recording, displaying an amazing range of variations in both frequency and time, is derived from Saturn’s radio emissions. These are closely related to Saturn’s aurorae, which like Earth’s occur around the poles of the planet.

Saturn’s aurorae are the source of intense radio emissions, which have been converted into sounds