A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens

in Astronomy, Design, Fashion, History | November 6th, 2025


Rings with a dis­creet dual pur­pose have been in use since before the com­mon era, when Han­ni­bal, fac­ing extra­di­tion, alleged­ly ingest­ed the poi­son he kept secret­ed behind a gem­stone on his fin­ger. (More recent­ly, poi­son rings gave rise to a pop­u­lar Game of Thrones fan the­o­ry…)

Vic­to­ri­ans pre­vent­ed their most close­ly kept secrets—illicit love let­ters, per­haps? Last wills and testaments?—from falling into the wrong hands by wear­ing the keys to the box­es con­tain­ing these items con­cealed in signet rings and oth­er state­ment-type pieces.

A tiny con­cealed blade could be lethal on the fin­ger of a skilled (and no doubt, beau­ti­ful) assas­sin. These days, they might be used to col­lect a bit of one’s attack­er’s DNA.

Enter the fic­tion­al world of James Bond, and you’ll find a num­ber of handy dandy spy rings includ­ing one that dou­bles as a cam­era, and anoth­er capa­ble of shat­ter­ing bul­let­proof glass with a sin­gle twist.

Armil­lary sphere rings like the ones in the British Muse­um’s col­lec­tion and the Swedish His­tor­i­cal Muse­um (top) serve a more benign pur­pose. Fold­ed togeth­er, the two-part out­er hoop and three inte­ri­or hoops give the illu­sion of a sim­ple gold band. Slipped off the wearer’s fin­ger, they can fan out into a phys­i­cal mod­el of celes­tial lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude.

Art his­to­ri­an Jes­si­ca Stew­art writes that in the 17th cen­tu­ry, rings such as the above spec­i­men were “used by astronomers to study and make cal­cu­la­tions. These pieces of jew­el­ry were con­sid­ered tokens of knowl­edge. Inscrip­tions or zodi­ac sym­bols were often used as dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments on the bands.”

The armil­lary sphere rings in the British Museum’s col­lec­tion are made of a soft high-alloy gold.

Jew­el­ry-lov­ing mod­ern astronomers seek­ing an old school fin­ger-based cal­cu­la­tion tool that real­ly works can order armil­lary sphere rings from Brook­lyn-based design­er Black Adept.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

When Astronomer Johannes Kepler Wrote the First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion, The Dream (1609)

The Rem­brandt Book Bracelet: Behold a Func­tion­al Bracelet Fea­tur­ing 1400 Rem­brandt Draw­ings

Behold the Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum, “Per­haps the Most Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Book Ever Print­ed” (1540)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in New York City.

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Discover the Oldest Book of the Americas: A Close Look at the Astronomical Maya Codex of Mexico

in Astronomy, Books, History | November 5th, 2025

From the mighty Maya civ­i­liza­tion, which dom­i­nat­ed Mesoamer­i­ca for more than three and a half mil­len­nia, we have exact­ly four books. Only one of them pre­dates the arrival of Span­ish con­quis­ta­dors in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry: the Códice Maya de Méx­i­co, or Maya Codex of Mex­i­co, which was cre­at­ed between 1021 and 1152. Though incom­plete, and hard­ly in good shape oth­er­wise, its art­work — col­ored in places with pre­cious mate­ri­als — vivid­ly evokes an ancient world­view now all but lost. In the video above from the Get­ty Muse­um and Smarthis­to­ry, art his­to­ri­ans Andrew Turn­er and Lau­ren Kil­roy-Ewbank tell us what we’re look­ing at when we behold the remains of this sacred Mayan book, the old­est ever found in the Amer­i­c­as.

“This book has a con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry,” says Turn­er. “It was long con­sid­ered to be a fake due to the strange cir­cum­stances in which it sur­faced.” After its dis­cov­ery in a pri­vate col­lec­tion in Mex­i­co City in the nine­teen-six­ties, it was rumored to have been loot­ed from a cave in Chi­a­pas.

At first pro­nounced a fake by experts, due to its lack of resem­blance to the oth­er extant Mayan texts, it was only ver­i­fied as the gen­uine arti­cle in 2018. For a non-spe­cial­ist, the ques­tion remains: what is the Códice about? Its pur­pose, as Kil­roy-Ewbank puts it, is astro­nom­i­cal, relay­ing as it does “infor­ma­tion about the cycle of the plan­et Venus” — which, as Turn­er adds, “was con­sid­ered a dan­ger­ous plan­et” by the Mayans.


The Códice con­tains records of Venus’ 584-day cycle over the course of 140 years, tes­ti­fy­ing to the scruti­ny Mayan astronomers gave to its com­pli­cat­ed pat­tern of ris­ing and falling. They thus man­aged to deter­mine — as many ancient civ­i­liza­tions did not — that it was both the Morn­ing Star and the Evening Star, although they seem to have been more inter­est­ed in what its move­ments revealed about the inten­tions of the deities they saw as con­trol­ling it, and thus the like­li­hood of events like war or famine. Those gods weren’t benev­o­lent: one page shows “a fright­ful skele­tal deity that has a blunt knife stick­ing out of his nasal cav­i­ty,” hold­ing “a giant jagged blade up” with one hand and “the hair of a cap­tive whose head he’s fresh­ly sev­ered” with the oth­er. That’s hard­ly the sort of image that comes to our mod­ern minds when we gaze up at the night sky, but then, we don’t see things like the Mayans did.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Move­ments of the Heav­ens

Behold the Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum, “Per­haps the Most Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Book Ever Print­ed” (1540)

The Ancient Astron­o­my of Stone­henge Decod­ed

Explore the Flo­ren­tine Codex: A Bril­liant 16th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Doc­u­ment­ing Aztec Cul­ture Is Now Dig­i­tized & Avail­able Online

How the Ancient Mayans Used Choco­late as Mon­ey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Download a 417-Megapixel Panorama of the Andromeda Galaxy—A Decade-Long NASA Project in the Making

in Astronomy | January 21st, 2025

Using the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, astronomers have cre­at­ed a majes­tic 417-megapix­el panora­ma of the Androm­e­da galaxy, locat­ed some 2.5 mil­lion light-years away from our plan­et. Tak­ing more than a decade to com­plete, the pho­to­mo­sa­ic cap­tures 200 mil­lion stars, which is only a frac­tion of Andromeda’s esti­mat­ed one tril­lion stars. Accord­ing to NASA, the 2.5 bil­lion pix­el mosa­ic “will help astronomers piece togeth­er the galaxy’s past his­to­ry that includes merg­ers with small­er satel­lite galax­ies.” On this NASA web­site, you can down­load a copy of the mosa­ic, and learn more about the explo­ration of Androm­e­da.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via PetaPix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent 

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Sun Ra Applies to NASA’s Art Pro­gram: When the Inven­tor of Space Jazz Applied to Make Space Art

NASA Enlists Andy Warhol, Annie Lei­bovitz, Nor­man Rock­well & 350 Oth­er Artists to Visu­al­ly Doc­u­ment America’s Space Pro­gram

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

 

 

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Astronomers Create a Digital Atlas of Over 380,000 Galaxies

in Astronomy | November 16th, 2023

In the observ­able uni­verse, there are esti­mat­ed to be between 200 bil­lion to two tril­lion galax­ies. By com­par­i­son to these super-Sagan­ian num­bers, the 383,620 galax­ies cap­tured by the Siena Galaxy Atlas may seem like small pota­toes. But the SGA actu­al­ly rep­re­sents a land­mark achieve­ment among dig­i­tal astron­o­my cat­a­logs: as Saman­tha Hill writes in Astron­o­my, it draws its data from three Dark Ener­gy Spec­tro­scop­ic Instru­ment Lega­cy Sur­veys, which togeth­er con­sti­tute “one of the largest sur­veys ever con­duct­ed.” Com­ing to 7,637 down­load­able pages, it “presents a new pos­si­ble nam­ing con­ven­tion for the galax­ies, and cap­tures images of the objects in opti­cal and infrared wave­lengths. Each of the target’s data set includes a whole slew of oth­er infor­ma­tion includ­ing its size and mor­phol­o­gy.”

Though pub­licly acces­si­ble online, the for­mi­da­bly tech­ni­cal SGA may present the non-astronomer with a some­what steep learn­ing curve. One way to approach the archive through some of the espe­cial­ly impres­sive galax­ies it cap­tures is to orga­nize the list below its search fil­ters accord­ing to size. The images that result are not, of course, pho­tographs of the kind any of us could take by point­ing a cam­era up at the night sky, no mat­ter how pricey the cam­era. Rather, they’re the results, processed into visu­al leg­i­bil­i­ty, of enor­mous amounts of data col­lect­ed by advanced tele­scope and satel­lite.

To get more tech­ni­cal, the SGA is also “the first cos­mic atlas to fea­ture the light pro­files of galax­ies  —  a curve that describes how the bright­ness of the galaxy changes from its bright­est point, usu­al­ly at the cen­ter, to its dimmest, com­mon­ly at its edge.”

So writes Space.com’s Robert Lea, who also explains more about the SGA’s use­ful­ness to sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sion­als. It “rep­re­sents peak accu­ra­cy, promis­ing to be a gold mine of galac­tic infor­ma­tion for sci­en­tists aim­ing to inves­ti­gate every­thing from the births and evo­lu­tions of galax­ies to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of dark mat­ter and prop­a­ga­tion of grav­i­ta­tion­al waves through space.” Its data could also help astronomers “find the sources of grav­i­ta­tion­al wave sig­nals detect­ed on Earth, because these faint rip­ples in the very fab­ric of space and time wash over our plan­et after trav­el­ing for mil­lions of light years.” Even if you’re under­tak­ing no such search­es of your own, a trip through the SGA can still enhance your appre­ci­a­tion of how much human­i­ty has come to learn about these “near­by” galax­ies — and how much remains to be learned about all those that lie beyond. Enter the archive here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Atlas of Space: Behold Bril­liant Maps of Con­stel­la­tions, Aster­oids, Plan­ets & “Every­thing in the Solar Sys­tem Big­ger Than 10km”

When Galax­ies Col­lide

What Would It Be Like to Fly Through the Uni­verse?

10,000 Galax­ies in 3D

Lux Aeter­na: A Jour­ney of Light, From Dis­tant Galax­ies to Small Drops of Water

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold Colorful Geologic Maps of Mars Released by The United States Geological Survey

in Astronomy, Maps | January 18th, 2023

The USGS Astro­ge­ol­o­gy Sci­ence Cen­ter has recent­ly released a series of col­or­ful and intri­cate­ly-detailed maps of Mars. These col­or­ful maps, notes USGS, “pro­vide high­ly detailed views of the [plantet’s] sur­face and allow sci­en­tists to inves­ti­gate com­plex geo­log­ic rela­tion­ships both on and beneath the sur­face. These types of maps are use­ful for both plan­ning for and then con­duct­ing land­ed mis­sions.”

The map above lets you see Olym­pus Mons, the tallest vol­cano in the solar sys­tem, which stands more than twice the height of Mount Ever­est. The USGS goes on to add: “Map read­ers can visu­al­ize the caldera com­plex more eas­i­ly due to the detail that is avail­able at the 1:200,000 scale and the addi­tion of con­tour lines to the map. The map cov­ers a region that is rough­ly the size of the Dal­las-Ft. Worth met­ro­pol­i­tan area and is a detailed look at the volcano’s sum­mit that we have not seen before. This new view of the Olym­pus Mons caldera com­plex allows sci­en­tists to more eas­i­ly com­pare it to sim­i­lar fea­tures on Earth (known as ter­res­tri­al analogs) such as Hawaii’s Mau­na Loa.”

You can find more Mar­t­ian maps here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Sur­face of Mars Shown in Stun­ning 4K Res­o­lu­tion

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

Vin­tage Geo­log­i­cal Maps Get Turned Into 3D Topo­graph­i­cal Won­ders

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The First Surviving Photograph of the Moon (1840)

in Astronomy, Photography | July 21st, 2022

Every­one has been agog over the first pho­tos from the James Webb tele­scope, and for good rea­son. “These images,” Riv­ka Galchin writes at The New York­er, “car­ry news about the ear­ly uni­verse, the birth and death of stars, the col­li­sion of galax­ies, and the atmos­phere of exo­plan­ets.” They’re also “very, very pret­ty,” she writes, com­par­ing them to Ver­meer.

The clar­i­ty and lev­els of detailed infor­ma­tion about the ear­li­est galax­ies have even aston­ished astronomers, whose work has advanced rapid­ly along­side the growth of the pho­to­graph­ic medi­um. It was an astronomer, in fact – Johann Hein­rich von Madler – who first coined the word “pho­tog­ra­phy” in 1839. “Astronomers quick­ly embraced the use of pho­to­graph­ic plates because of their good res­o­lu­tion and the abil­i­ty to make much larg­er images,” APS Physics News notes.

Astropho­tog­ra­phy prop­er­ly began in 1840, when John William Drap­er, a British-born chemist and doc­tor, took the image above from the roof of the New York Uni­ver­si­ty obser­va­to­ry, cred­it­ed as the first daguerreo­type of the Moon. Daguerre him­self might have tak­en an 1839 image, but it was like­ly destroyed in a fire, as were Draper’s attempts of the pre­vi­ous year, which burned up in a NYU blaze in 1865.

By all accounts, how­ev­er, these ear­li­er attempts at Moon pho­tog­ra­phy were blur­ry and unfo­cused, show­ing lit­tle detail of the Earth’s satel­lite. Draper’s lunar “por­trait,” from 1840, at the top, is large­ly con­sid­ered “the world’s first true astropho­to,” writes Jason Major at Lights in the Dark, for its lev­els of detail and high con­trast, com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing. As Scott Walk­er writes:

Drap­er set out to try and improve on Daguerre’s break­through by increas­ing plate sen­si­tiv­i­ty and reduc­ing expo­sure times.… His advance­ment in the tech­nique allowed visu­al­iza­tion of craters, moun­tains and val­leys on the moon’s sur­face which pre­vi­ous­ly couldn’t be cap­tured.

Splotched, spot­ted, and heav­i­ly degrad­ed, the image may not look like much now, but a con­tem­po­rary of Drap­er described it then as “the first time that any­thing like a dis­tinct rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the moon’s sur­face has been obtained.”

The achieve­ment was inspi­ra­tional, and many bet­ter attempts soon fol­lowed in rapid suc­ces­sion as the medi­um evolved. In 1851, pho­tog­ra­ph­er John Whip­ple and father-and-son astronomers William and George Bond improved on Drap­er’s process and made the Moon daguerreo­type fur­ther up through the Great Refrac­tor Equa­to­r­i­al Mount Tele­scope at the Har­vard Col­lege Obser­va­to­ry. (The year pre­vi­ous, Drap­er him­self col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bond père to make an image of the star Vega). The image caused a “ver­i­ta­ble furor,” Smart His­to­ry notes, at the Great Exhi­bi­tion of 1851.

Between 1857 and 1862, astropho­tog­ra­ph­er and ama­teur astronomer War­ren De La Rue made a series of stereo­scop­ic Moon images (lov­ing­ly pre­served online by astro­physi­cist and Queen gui­tarist Bri­an May), one of which you can see fur­ther up. De La Rue had seen Whip­ple’s daguerreo­type at the Great Exhi­bi­tion and began inno­vat­ing his own process for cre­at­ing stereo­scop­ic astropho­tographs. At the same time, Drap­er’s son, Hen­ry, “an accom­plished astropho­tog­ra­ph­er and one of the most famous Amer­i­can astronomers of his day,” Kiona Smith writes at Forbes, had tak­en over his father’s Moon pho­tog­ra­phy project. See an 1863 image tak­en by the younger Drap­er just above.

“Before the inven­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy,” notes APS News, “astronomers had to sketch what they saw in their tele­scopes by hand, often miss­ing cru­cial details.” Daguerre and Drap­er’s inno­va­tions, and those that came soon after­ward, “showed them a far supe­ri­or method was pos­si­ble.” It is aston­ish­ing that these results could be achieved only a few decades after the first pho­to­graph, tak­en in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce. It is maybe even more aston­ish­ing that only a cen­tu­ry and a half  or so lat­er — a mean­ing­less drop in the cos­mic timescale — astropho­tog­ra­phy would look beyond the moon to the very ori­gins of the uni­verse itself.

via Smart His­to­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

The Full Rota­tion of the Moon: A Beau­ti­ful, High Res­o­lu­tion Time Lapse Film

The First Pho­tographs Tak­en by the Webb Tele­scope: See Far­away Galax­ies & Neb­u­lae in Unprece­dent­ed Detail

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The First Photographs Taken by the Webb Telescope: See Faraway Galaxies & Nebulae in Unprecedented Detail

in Astronomy, Technology | July 13th, 2022


Late last year we fea­tured the amaz­ing engi­neer­ing of the James Webb Space Tele­scope, which is now the largest opti­cal tele­scope in space. Capa­ble of reg­is­ter­ing phe­nom­e­na old­er, more dis­tant, and fur­ther off the vis­i­ble spec­trum than any pre­vi­ous device, it will no doubt show us a great many things we’ve nev­er seen before. In fact, it’s already begun: ear­li­er this week, NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter released the first pho­tographs tak­en through the Webb tele­scope, which “rep­re­sent the first wave of full-col­or sci­en­tif­ic images and spec­tra the obser­va­to­ry has gath­ered, and the offi­cial begin­ning of Webb’s gen­er­al sci­ence oper­a­tions.”

The areas of out­er space depict­ed in unprece­dent­ed detail by these pho­tos include the Cari­na Neb­u­la (top), the South­ern Ring Neb­u­la (2nd image on this page), and the galaxy clus­ters known as Stephan’s Quin­tet (the home of the angels in It’s a Won­der­ful Life) and SMACS 0723 (bot­tom).

That last, notes Petapix­el’s Jaron Schnei­der, “is the high­est res­o­lu­tion pho­to of deep space that has ever been tak­en,” and the light it cap­tures “has trav­eled for more than 13 bil­lion years.” What this com­pos­ite image shows us, as NASA explains, is SMACS 0723 “as it appeared 4.6 bil­lion years ago” — and its “slice of the vast uni­verse cov­ers a patch of sky approx­i­mate­ly the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by some­one on the ground.”

All this can be a bit dif­fi­cult to get one’s head around, at least if one is pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with nei­ther astron­o­my nor cos­mol­o­gy. But few imag­i­na­tions could go un-cap­tured by the rich­ness of the images them­selves. Sharp, rich in col­or, var­ied in tex­ture — and in the case of the Cari­na Neb­u­la or “Cos­mic Cliffs,” NASA adds, “seem­ing­ly three-dimen­sion­al” — they could have come straight from a state-of-the-art sci­ence-fic­tion movie. In fact they out­do even the most advanced sci-fi visions, as NASA’s Earth­rise out­did even the uncan­ni­ly real­is­tic-in-ret­ro­spect views of the Earth from space imag­ined by Stan­ley Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tors in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But these pho­tos are the fruits of a real-life jour­ney toward the final fron­tier, one you can fol­low in real time on NASA’s “Where Is Webb?” track­er. “Webb was designed to spend the next decade in space,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert. “How­ev­er, a suc­cess­ful launch pre­served sub­stan­tial fuel, and NASA now antic­i­pates a trove of insights about the uni­verse for the next twen­ty years.” That’s quite a long run by the cur­rent stan­dards of space explo­ration — but then, by the scale of space and time the Webb tele­scope has new­ly opened up, even 100 mil­len­nia is the blink of an eye.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of James Webb Tele­scope

How to Take a Pic­ture of a Black Hole: Watch the 2017 Ted Talk by Katie Bouman, the MIT Grad Stu­dent Who Helped Take the Ground­break­ing Pho­to

How Sci­en­tists Col­orize Those Beau­ti­ful Space Pho­tos Tak­en By the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope

The Very First Pic­ture of the Far Side of the Moon, Tak­en 60 Years Ago

The First Images and Video Footage from Out­er Space, 1946–1959

The Beau­ty of Space Pho­tog­ra­phy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How to Decode NASA’s Message to Aliens

in Astronomy, Science | January 12th, 2022

When NASA spent close to a bil­lion dol­lars on the Voy­ager pro­gram, launch­ing a pair of probes from Cape Canaver­al in 1977, its pri­ma­ry pur­pose was not to find intel­li­gent extra-ter­res­tri­al life. The pro­gram grew out of ambi­tions for a “Grand Tour”: four robot­ic probes that would vis­it all the plan­ets in the out­er solar sys­tem, tak­ing advan­tage of a 175-year align­ment of Jupiter and Sat­urn. A down­sized ver­sion pro­duced Voy­ager 1 and 2, each craft “a minia­ture mar­vel,” writes the Attic. “Weigh­ing less than a Volk­swa­gen, each had 65,000 parts. Six thrusters pow­ered by plu­to­ni­um. Three gyro­scopes. Assort­ed instru­ments to mea­sure grav­i­ty, radi­a­tion, mag­net­ic fields, and more. Design and assem­bly took years.”

Since reach­ing Jupiter in 1979, the two probes have sent back aston­ish­ing images from the great gas giants and the very edges of the solar sys­tem. “By 2030, Voy­ager 1 and 2 will cease com­mu­ni­ca­tions for good,” says Cory Zap­at­ka in the Verge Sci­ence video above, “and while they won’t be able to beam infor­ma­tion back to Earth, they’re going to con­tin­ue sail­ing through space at almost 60,000 kilo­me­ters per hour,” reach­ing inter­stel­lar unknowns their mak­ers will nev­er see. Voy­ager 1 was only sup­posed to last 10 years. In 2012, it left the solar sys­tem, to drift, along with its twin, “end­less­ly among the stars of our galaxy,” Tim­o­thy Fer­ris writes in The New York­er, “unless some­one or some­thing encoun­ters them some­day.”

As deep space detri­tus, the probes will make excel­lent car­ri­ers for an inter­stel­lar mes­sage in a bot­tle, the Voy­ager team rea­soned. The idea prompt­ed the cre­ation of the Gold­en Record, an LP fit­ted to each probe con­tain­ing a mes­sage from human­i­ty to the cos­mos. “Etched in cop­per, plat­ed with gold, and sealed in alu­minum cas­es, the records are expect­ed to remain intel­li­gi­ble for more than a bil­lion years, mak­ing them the longest-last­ing objects ever craft­ed by human hands.” Pro­duced by Fer­ris and over­seen by Carl Sagan and a team includ­ing his future wife, Ann Druyan, the Gold­en Record includes the work of Mozart, Chuck Berry, folk music from around the world, the sounds of waves and whales, and one of the most uni­ver­sal of human sounds, laugh­ter (like­ly that of Sagan him­self).

The Gold­en Record also includes 115 images, etched into its very sur­face. No, they are not dig­i­tal files. “There are no jpegs or tifs includ­ed on it,” says Zap­at­ka. After all, “The Voyager’s com­put­er sys­tems were only 69 kilo­bytes large, bare­ly enough for one image, let alone 115.” These are ana­log still pho­tographs and dia­grams that must be recon­struct­ed with math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­lae extract­ed from elec­tron­ic tones. The process starts with the dia­grams on the record’s cov­er — sim­ple icons that con­tain an incred­i­ble den­si­ty of infor­ma­tion. We begin with two cir­cles joined by a line. They are hydro­gen atoms, the most plen­ti­ful gas in the uni­verse, under­go­ing a change that occurs spon­ta­neous­ly once every 10 mil­lion years.

Dur­ing this rare occur­rence, the hydro­gen atoms emit ener­gy at wave­lengths of 21 cen­time­ters. This mea­sure­ment is used as “a con­stant for all the oth­er sym­bols on the record.” That’s an awful lot of back­ground knowl­edge required to deci­pher what look to the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly untrained eye like a pair of tiny eyes behind a pair of odd eye­glass­es. But for space­far­ing aliens, “how hard could that be?” says Bill Nye above in an abridged descrip­tion of how to decode the Gold­en Record. We may nev­er, in a bil­lion years, know if any extra-ter­res­tri­al species ever finds the record and makes the attempt. But the Gold­en Record has become as much an object of fas­ci­na­tion for humans as it is a greet­ing from Earth to the galaxy. Learn more from NASA here about the images encod­ed on the Gold­en Record and order your own repro­duc­tion (on LP or CD) here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

NASA Lets You Down­load Free Posters Cel­e­brat­ing the 40th Anniver­sary of the Voy­ager Mis­sions

Carl Sagan Warns Con­gress about Cli­mate Change (1985)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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