We continue our "Building Music" series, looking at how composers construct music. Today we look at how motifs, phrases, and periods, and themes are used to create full musical forms. Music Examples: Bach - French Suite in E major, BWV...

Imagine trying to use words to describe every scene in a film, every note in a song, or every street in your town. Now imagine trying to do it using only the numbers 1 and 0. Every time you use the Internet to watch a movie, listen to...

Binary Form is a piece of music with two sections. Perhaps like a verse and a chorus.

Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and other facilities, scientists have found the first gamma-ray binary in another galaxy and the most luminous one ever seen. The dual-star system, dubbed...

Domenico Scarlatti wrote over 550 single-movement sonatas for the harpsichord, making characteristic but innovative use of the instrument. This composer insights lesson explores sonata K208 in A major. Having clarified the Binary...

Optical media, such as CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, encode data as binary code and are read by lasers. We explore how these discs work and the impact they have had on music and video distribution. Additionally, we discuss the emergence...

Astronomers using observations from NASA's Kepler and Swift missions have discovered a group of rapidly spinning stars that produce X-rays at more than 100 times the peak levels ever seen from the sun. The...

The VISTA telescope has allowed us to peer through the hot gas and dark dust shrouding the spectacular Carina nebula to show us myriad stars, both newborn and in their death throes. The Carina Nebula, one of the largest and brightest...

Help NASA find exoplanets, worlds beyond our solar system, through a newly launched website called Planet Patrol. This citizen science platform allows members of the public to collaborate with professional...

This animation compares the X-ray 'heartbeats' of GRS 1915 and IGR J17091, two black holes that ingest gas from companion stars. GRS 1915 has nearly five times the mass of IGR J17091, which at three solar masses may be the...