Explanation:
What is that green thing?
A volunteer sky enthusiast surfing through online
has discovered something really strange.
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.
The Galaxy Zoo project encourages sky enthusiasts to browse through
SDSS images and classify galaxy types.
Now known popularly as
Hanny's Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the
mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497.
Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny's Voorwerp 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.
Pictured above, Hanny's Voorwerp was imaged recently by the 4.2-meter
William Herschel Telescope
in the Canary Islands by
Matt Jarvis,
Kevin Schawinski, and
William Keel.
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