Voyager 2 PWS Uranus encounter audio
Channel: Space Audio
Date: 2013-06-14

The Voyager 2 PWS plasma wave instrument recorded these signals during the Uranus fly-by in 1986 between January 23 11:07 and January 29 00:17 spacecraft event time (UTC at the spacecraft). This video includes all of the waveform (audio) data received during the entire planetary encounter. Unlike the various artistic interpretations available on YouTube, these are the complete and unmodified original observations without any frequency-shifting, filtering, or enhancements.

The PWS wideband waveform instruments on the two Voyager spacecraft sample the electric field on the dipole wire antenna at a rate of 28800 4-bit samples per second, using an automatic gain control. Consequently, the audio is just slightly better than telephone quality. Packets of 1600 samples are acquired, separated by the equivalent of 128 missing samples. Running these packets together results in the playback taking less than real-time (by a factor of 1600 / 1728), and also introduces a slight audible flutter. The amplitudes at the edges of these packets have been smoothed to reduce this flutter, but this is the only modification to the signal.

During this time interval, Voyager 2 flew from a position of about 66.6 Uranus radii ahead of the planet at a local time angle of 15:48 to a position of about 215.9 Uranus radii behind the planet at a local time angle of 4:56.  Intense noise resulting from ring particles impacting on the spacecraft can be heard near the ring plane crossing which occurred around  17:59 on January 24th (time index 2:02 in the video), while a rare interesting frame containing chorus was recorded shortly after closest approach to the planet around 18:00 (time index 4:10).

For more information on the Voyager project, see
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

For more information on the Voyager plasma wave investigations, see
https://space.physics.uiowa.edu/voyager/

For access to the specific data used to produce this video, see
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/voyager/data/VGPW_2001/EXTRAS/HTML/URANUS_ENCOUNTER/V2P3_014/V2P3_014.HTM

For more information on space audio, see
https://space-audio.org/

For more videos related to space audio, see my YouTube channel
https://youtube.com/VoyagerPWS

Please note the disclaimers under "About Space Audio" on my YouTube channel.  This is not a presentation of scientific findings and I am not representing any organization.