One Weird Galaxy: The "Green Voorwerp"
The mystery object is unusually green, not of any clear galaxy type, and situated below relatively normal looking spiral galaxy IC 2497.
Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel, discovered the strange green "voorwerp" (Dutch for "object") last year while browsing through the Galaxy Zoo project, which encourages enthusiasts to browse through SDSS images and classify galaxy types. Subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but a leading hypothesis holds that Hanny's "Voorweep" is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that was visible in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.
The photo above was imaged recently by the 4.2-meter William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands by Matt Jarvis, Kevin Schawinski, and William Keel.
Posted by Casey Kazan.
Source links:
http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/03/20/voorwerp-fever/
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080625.html
It's Cthulhu. The end is nigh.
Posted by: Michael | June 28, 2008 at 11:08 AM
Why call it 'voorwerp' first (= correct spelling) and then 'voorweep'(= nonexistent word)?
Posted by: Kim | July 05, 2008 at 01:25 AM