Sonification of an exoplanetary atmosphere

Abstract

This study investigates the effectiveness of user design methods to create a sonification for an astronomer who analyses exoplanet meteorological data situated in habitable zones. Requirements about the astronomer's work, the dataset and how to sonify it utilising Grounded Theory were identified. Parameter mapping sonification was used to represent effective transiting radii measurements through subtractive synthesis and spatialization. The design was considered to be effective, allowing the instantaneous identification of a water feature overlooked on a visual graph, even when noise within the dataset overlapped the source signal. The results suggest that multiple parameter mappings provide richer auditory stimuli and semantic qualities in order to allow an improved understanding of the dataset.