Saturday, August 30, 2008

Hanny's Voorwerp... new discovery by a primary teacher!

"A little bit news here and there" now showing... The New Cosmic Ghost, Hanny's Voorwerp !
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"Hanny's Voorwerp" is simply "Hanny's object" ("Voorwerp" means "object" in Dutch!)
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Hanny is just an ordinary primary teacher like any one would think of. As a member of the web GalaxyZoo.org, she was just doing her usual work that was to classify the pictures uploaded there. While poring through the photos, something has captured her eyes: an unusual object with peculiar green colour and also a big halo in the middle of itself.

Lying near the spiral galaxy classified IC2497, this object stands out because of its shape, together with the g magnitude so bright as to suggest a single very strong emission line. This object is different from any classified galaxies; this could suggest that a new category of galaxy might be created!!!

After many research and checking of a lot of observatories and astrophysicistss, The only hypothesis is that this so-called "Voorwerp" is a small galaxy but act like reflection nebula that reflected light from a quasar event in the centre of IC2497 around 100,000 years ago.

People from the Hubble Space Telescope have promised to take a look closer into this object in 2009. Maybe at this point of time, we'll have a clearer picture on what the Voorwerp really is? =P