Hanny van Arkel was poring over photos of galaxies on the Internet last August when she stumbled across a strange object in the night sky: a bright, gaseous mass with a gaping hole in its middle.
"It looked a bit like an irregular galaxy, but I wasn't sure what it was," Van Arkel told CNN. So she posted a query on the Web site of the Galaxy Zoo project, which encourages members of the public to join in astronomy research online.
Van Arkel is a 25-year-old schoolteacher in Heerlen, The Netherlands, not an astrophysicist.
The Hubble team is going to look at it, even.
The name of the strange mass: Hanny's Voorwerp. God, you've got to love that. It means "Hanny's Object."
Hanny van Arkel and out.
Image is the original that Hanny posted her query about.
3 comments:
Damn! Makes me want to find something irregular...so I can have a strange mass named after me...
A very cool story, LT. Thank you.
Speaking of the Universe....These Pictures Will Humble Anyone - Guaranteed!
http://www.webxact.co.uk/2008/08/these-pictures-will-humble-anyone.html
I know what you mean, TPM, I know what you mean.
And those are cool images, Skooldays. Thanks.
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