Orion Rising
Five of Orion's stars, sung by how far north or south they sit in the sky: one semitone for each degree. The belt steps down, then the shoulders leap up.
Star positions: ESA Gaia and Hipparcos
In the Voice Mirror
Sing the Universe
Three short melodies made from real measurements of the sky, fitted to your range. You listen, then sing them back, and the Mirror scores how close you got.
How it works
- Run the Voice Mirror first, so the melodies fit your range. Opened on its own, it uses G2 to G4.
- Pick a melody and listen to it.
- Sing it back one note at a time. Any octave counts.
- Get a score out of 100, with a mark for every note, and share the card if you like it.
The three melodies
Pulsar Clock
Five famous pulsars, each one sung at its spin rate (turns a second, in hertz), moved by octaves into your voice.
- Crab
- 29.6 Hz
- Vela
- 11.19 Hz
- PSR B1919+21, the first pulsar found
- 0.748 Hz
- PSR B1937+21, a millisecond pulsar
- 641.9 Hz
- Geminga
- 4.22 Hz
Spin rates: ATNF pulsar catalogue
The Perseus Note
The black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster hums a B-flat 57 octaves below middle C, the deepest note ever detected from an object in the universe. You hold it, brought up into your range.
NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory, 2003
Every score is out of 100, and the card names the melody and where its data came from.