Amateur astronomer spies gassy "cosmic ghost" ("Hanny's Voorwerp")

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 8/10/08 | Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Dutch primary school teacher and amateur astronomer has discovered what some are calling a "cosmic ghost," a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the middle that may represent a new class of astronomical object.

The teacher, Hanny van Arkel, discovered the object while volunteering in the Galaxy Zoo project, which enlists the help of members of the public to classify galaxies online.

"At first, we had no idea what it was. It could have been in our solar system, or at the edge of the universe," Yale University astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski, a member and co-founder of the Galaxy Zoo team, said in a statement.

The find, nicknamed "Hanny's Voorwerp" (Dutch for object), soon had scientists training their telescopes on the object.

"What we saw was really a mystery," Schawinski said. "The Voorwerp didn't contain any stars."

Made entirely of very hot gas, the eerie green object is illuminated by remnant light from the nearby galaxy IC 2497.

"We think that in the recent past the galaxy IC 2497 hosted an enormously bright quasar," Schawinski said.

[NormsRevenge]

'Hanny's Voorwerp', a green blob of gas (center] believed to be a 'light echo' from the bright, stormy centre of a distant galaxy that has now gone dim, in an undated image. (Dan Smith, Peter Herbert, Matt Jarvis and the ING/Handout/Reuters)

[NormsRevenge]

Galaxy Zoo
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

[LibFreeOrDie]

Ghostbusters!

[Brilliant]

Looks like Kermit the Frog.

[SunTzuWu]

More info here at Astronomy Picture Of the Day from June 25, 2008.

[exit82]

“Voorwerp”?

‘Round here, we call ‘em farts.

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks!

[Kirkwood]

You’re right. It does look like Kermit.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Slimer lives. Kermit rules!

[Alas Babylon!]

It’s not easy being green!

[ETL]

One seemingly reliable source estimates that this mysterious object is ~700 million light years away, where one light year, the distance light travels in one year at its constant speed of 186,000 per second, is roughly 6 TRILLION miles. So 700 million light years is 700 million x 6 trillion...MILES. And the light we are seeing now was emitted 700 million years ago! At that time on Earth, geologists say, a huge super continent called Rodinia was still in the process of splitting apart. For those of you who live near the New Madrid Fault, you can thank this event for creating it.

Rodinia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia

[colinhester]

Cool....bump for later

[SunkenCiv]

Off-topic: I'm really sick of that "Obama - The One!" video that pops up. Really sick of it.

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[SunkenCiv]

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[wastedyears]

Ping if you haven’t already seen this.