Twinkle Heartbeat

Yamaguchi | Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Awards & Nominations

Twinkle Heartbeat has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Twinkle Heartbeat

High-Level Project Summary

Twinkle Heartbeat is a web application that enables you to listen to the heartbeats of variable stars in the constellations as music. This project aims to promote interest in variable stars and the universe by presenting the variability of stars in an easy-to-understand way. This web application uses sound to represent the variability of stars, making it easier to understand the variability of stars. Furthermore, by simultaneously playing sounds representing the variability of variable stars in the same constellation, it is possible to create music unique to that constellation, which is more interesting to people.

Link to Final Project

https://20221002t184722-dot-twinklemusic-364214.dt.r.appspot.com/

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1y5CvbnznfLZCilZUM9U0ZgHxSYlvT7QUc8P7z_M_vqI/edit#slide=id.g15d2d0f8d69_0_90

Detailed Project Description

Variable stars are stars that can change their brightness over a period of time. Although they are numerous and are inside many of our favorite constellations, we tend to not notice their changes because the periods are over such a long period of time. Therefore, we would like to use sound as a method to represent them in the form of our orchestra.

Our Orchestra(Constellations)

In this project, we chose to define the constellations as our orchestra, and their variable stars as our orchestra musicians. After you open our application, you can then choose one of our constellations to learn about. After you have selected a constellation and pressed play, a new webpage will show up that will show a photo, a description, and finally, play the unique sound that it makes in the background.

The Music Sheet(How the sound was made)

In order to make the sounds, first, we made a table that listed all the different spectral types we could find. After which, we took only the spectral types and periods of the stars which are present in the constellation.

Then, after setting the lower frequency limit to 27.5 Hz and the upper limit to 4186.009 Hz, we translated all the spectral types to their corresponding frequency in the new range. Next, we used the period value from our data to fluctuate the sound volume.

Our Audience(The Benefits)

With the help of our applications, students everywhere will not only learn the basic details about constellations, but they will also be able to experience audibly, the differences between each constellation. It is as if the constellations gained another dimension to their personality.

The Tools: In order to make the application we used React, Next.js, VSCode, Excel, and docker.

Space Agency Data

PERIOD and SPECTRUM were extracted from gcvs5, and the PERIOD was set to the period of the volume, and the symbol of the spectrum was tied to the pitch frequency. The spectrum is represented by a symbol and a number (0~9), as in M5. This time, M and 5 are used for the conversion. The symbols are arranged in the order of O, B, A, F, G, K, and M with the highest surface temperature, and the numerical values are used in the order 9~0. The scale frequency is associated with every symbol-numeric combination. The lower limit of the scale frequency is set to 27.5 Hz and the upper limit to 4186.009 Hz. The data calculated above is used to produce the sound of the variable star.

Hackathon Journey

The Space Apps experience was very exciting and fun. Our team was Impressed and gathered by the idea of using sound to represent the changing brightness of variable stars. We were divided into three development teams: one to develop the front end of the website, one to generate sound, and one to analyze open data and make it available to the program. There were many difficult issues such as extracting information from open data and synthesizing sounds, but thanks to the efforts and cooperation of the team members, we were able to develop a prototype that could actually be experienced. I would like to thank all those who cooperated with us.