Astronomy and Art

The NSO has been having a very artistic month with several collaborations with artists and galleries reaching exciting stages.

Adventures in Acoustic Cosmology

Hubble Space Telescope and ALMA observations of the Antenna Galaxy
Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae Galaxies
overlaid with a radio-image taken by ALMA.
In the ‘image’, each pixel is actually represents a spectrum
of frequencies across the electromagnetic radio spectrum:
the ‘image’ is actually a data-cube.
Credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / ESA / NASA / STScI

Working with long-time collaborator composer Gavin Starks, NSO Director Andy is developing a new way of exploring the universe - using sound rather than just images.The latest stage of this work in developing a "Soniverse" was announced at the National Astronomy Meeting in Hull and led to a lot of interest including an interview for BBC Radio Humberside and press coverage. You can find out more on Binary Dust.

Tate Exchange

The NSO and the Liverpool Telescope are also at the core of an exhibit and workshops at Tate Liverpool. The Astrophysics Exchange features simulations of the night sky, recent data from the LT, and selected observations from the telescope - many taken by NSO schools, students and users.

The New Observatory at FACT

Finally, the LT and NSO also feature in an exciting new exhibition at FACT in Liverpool. The New Observatory is an exploration by a number of artists of the opportunities and challenges of modern technology, sensors and huge streams of data and as part of the exhibition we have set up a "liveish" feed of the previous nights observations from La Palma.