In this edition of Space Music we’ve got two stunning examples of cosmic sonification (space data transformed into sound data) and one really cool music video from Alphabet’s Heaven that at least kicks off with a shot of the moon. I think that’s enough to merit a post.

So let’s kick things off.

Buddhist Stars
This project comes to us from Astrophysicist Lucianne Walkowicz, who weaves her music with sonified data from the planet-hunting Kepler mission…

While the wait for Dr. Dre’s “Planets” album will likely drag out in aeons, founding Wu-Tang Clan member GZA forges ahead with plans to release his own space-based hip-hop album. As this Wall Street Journal article nicely outlines, GZA has teamed up with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and violinist Marco Vitali to “strip bare” the planets and essentially justify the ways of physics to man.

A master of soundtracks for imaginary motion pictures, Eno originally produced the 1983 album “Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks” to score the nearly-imaginary documentary “For All Mankind.” The final film didn’t come out till 1989 and by then the score had come to include additional Eno tracks and the work of other artists.

You can read more about “For All Mankind” over at the Criterion Collection, but let’s turn back to Eno’s “Apollo. ” You’ve almost certainly heard the track “An Ending (Ascent)” off the album, especially since its ethereal beauty underlies the brutal violence of such films as “28 Days Later” and “Drive.”

Travel to Saturn’s frozen moon of Titan and you’ll discover lakes of liquid methane, thick smog clouds and exactly 13 minutes and 46 seconds worth of Earth music.

Back in 1997, French musicians Julien Civange and Louis Haeri composed four tracks to place aboard ESA’s Titan-bound Huygens probe, which would in turn make the seven-year journey board NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Dubbed “Music2Titan,” the EP breaks down as follows: