Cecil Kleakins

The Huygens probe landed on Titan on January 14, 2005. NASA funded a camera which recorded the descent onto the surface of Titan. They put together a time lapse video (11 MB, QT) which shows the 4 hour descent in 5 minutes.

The most oddly surreal thing about the video is its soundtrack, which has the feel of an Eno/Fripp experiment in ambient music circa 1974. But yet I have to admit it was comforting in a deeply magical way. I nearly drifted off to sleep while watching it. I became curious what composer had scored it. Then I read the NASA site:

Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens’ motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe’s heat shield hitting Titan’s atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.

Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There’s a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens’ signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes - one for each of instrument’s 13 different science parts - that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters. During its descent, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer took 3,500 exposures.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 at 6:58 pm and is filed under General, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.