James Trayford

... showing multiple galaxy maps conveys different properties - but we can't watch them all at once... I'm interested in sound to enhance perception of data, and find new things! If you have application ideas, try our STRAUSS sonification code (github.com/james-trayfo...), or let me know! 🧪🔭⚡🐡

...Temperature illustrates the hot outflowing gas corresponding to the windy sound - pale plumes emanate from the central region. Sonification allows us to represent this with sound while visualising something else - such as starlight - so we can impart more dimensions of the data at once! 🧪🔭⚡🐡

The sophisticated COLIBRE simulations finally land on the arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2508.21126. Treating these with sonification, we can get new intuition for galaxy evolution to augment our visuals. Sound on for the explainer vid, visit the site for more! colibre.strw.leidenuniv.nl/videos.html 🔭🧪

🚨 you can also find more strauss examples here! www.audiouniverse.org/research/str... 🎶🎧🧪🔭🐡🚀 @stsci.edu #EduSky #musiciansky #philsci

YouTube video by Audio Universe Hearing black hole winds

Next paper I want to highlight: the paper for STRAUSS by @trayford.bsky.social et al. came out! ☄️ #astrocode

STRAUSS is a tool for sonifying scientific data, meaning you can enhance the presentation & accessibility of your data.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2504.01660

Here's a great example:

Thanks Emily! 🙌

Thanks Ben! 🙏

Arron George, a tall man from Trinidad wearing a patterned shirt and dark glasses

Through diverse perspectives, we discover a lot. We found composite rhythms in calypso ideal for representing many planets at once, which we will build on. Arron guided us musically, providing the joyful incidental music, instrument recordings and endless enthusiasm...(3/n)🧪🔭🐡 #edusky #musiciansky

Caribbean beat brings the Universe to life A new show exploring the Solar System through the vibrant sounds of the Caribbean premiered last night.   

Collaboration helped us do this as authentically as possible; The instruments chosen to 'voice' each star and planet, the harmonies used that represent calypso styles, and the relative emphasis on musical elements like melody, rhythm and harmony... www.port.ac.uk/news-events-... (2/n) 🧪🔭☀️🐡 #EduSky

YouTube video by Audio Universe Caribbean Audio Universe: Tour of the Solar System

In 2021, we released a unique planetarium show for blind or low vision kids, using sounds and music convey space. Music of course is very cultural... now we've collaborated with Trinidadian scientists and musicians for a Caribbean version, watch below (1/n)! 🧪🔭⚡☀️🐡 www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjkA...

It's a very happy first-author paper day for me! In this thread I'll explain some of the exciting results from my paper
nicknamed 'Cloudy-Maraston' with the aid of doodles inspired by the amazing work of @clairelamman.bsky.social !

arxiv.org/abs/2501.03133

Are the dark regions embedded in 100% areas (e.g. near Finland-Russia border) bodies of water?

Interesting to see ESA using the inverse spectrogram approach on Euclid images now. In general great that sonification is being thought of more by major agencies!

...shameless plug of this article on our sonification project and STRAUSS code if it's of interest bsky.app/profile/tray...

Sonification and Sound Design for Astronomy Research, Education and Public Engagement Over the last ten years there has been a large increase in the number of projects using sound to represent astronomical data and concepts. Motivation for these projects includes the potential to enhan...

Check out this paper for a thoughtful review of sonification in astronomy: arxiv.org/abs/2206.13536

A photo of a mini Mars Rover model on a wooden desk.

A photo of a strip of coloured LED lights snaked around on a grey carpet. The first LEDs at the top are off and then the LEDs go from blue to orange as they go down.

Last week of work and everyone seemed to get their toys out! A mini Mars rover and a work in progress from @trayford.bsky.social

🔭🦑

Great to see ESO on here!

also not sure 3.54 rounds to 3.6

This has happened to me before when i'd forgotten to convert argvals from strings. My favourite recent is converting a numpy boolean index array to an integer array by accident so it just happily indexes the 0th and 1st element and yields garbage

Do you mean real drummers? I do think machine music has influenced drummers to innovate in really interesting ways, e.g. JD Beck as a current example

I've definitely seen instances of people new to creative mediums referring to things they've generated with prompts as 'my art'. I think what they're closer to is curators, and that curatorial skill is usually developed alongside the creative one (choosing ideas, throwing away bad ones)

Exciting! Hope the booth goes well 😉

Noticed different sentiment between arts, STEM, education etc surrounding machine learning & AI. How about a bit of word association? interested in adjectives for any/all of:

- AI: ___
- Generative AI: ___
- LLMs: ___
- ChatGPT: ___
- Machine Learning: ___

🧪🔭⚛️🐡🐙 #art #artsci #musicianfeed #EduSky

Just realised Peterborough united have scored and conceded the most goals in league 1 this season excepting leaders Wycombe and last-place Shrewsbury, respectively. Just about sums it up - still good win this weekend #pufc

A nuanced issue fs, but definitely one worth bringing to light!

A potential issue I see, though, is further encouraging a wide-shallow mode of applications, which makes more work for everyone and I think is more likely to lead to a mismatch between people and positions (e.g. 'a' and 'b' ending up in each others ideal positions...)

I think randomisation is the only way to fully remove bias - though ofc must be mindful that this can cut both ways.

"i liked them before they were observed"
such a gem of an album though

reading up AOTY lists and stopping at 10 to leave a schrodingers chance that I’m in there. admittedly with a very short half-life

👀 did you have to change the ssh alive interval or count settings for this to be usable?