Hubble Confirms Nature of Mysterious Green Blob

An anonymous reader writes "In 2007, Dutch secondary school biology teacher Hanny van Arkel spotted something mysterious in the night sky. Combing through Galaxy Zoo, an online database set up to enlist the public's help in classifying galaxies, she came across a glowing green smudge of light approximately 650 million light-years away. The object, which became known as Hanny's Voorwerp (Dutch for 'object'), is one of the most mysterious in the universe. Now, detailed Hubble Space Telescope images and new x-ray observations presented here today at the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society may finally confirm what it is."

And for those not interested in reading TFA

[gomiam]

... the blob is, according to observations, a gas cloud who was irradiated until recently by a now dead quasar. The irradiation excited the oxygen atoms in the cloud, making it glow green.

I think it wouldn't have been too much to add this to the entry.

Interesting

[gman003]

The article also brings up an interesting point: since the glow is caused by radiation from a quasar a few hundred thousand light years away, but that quasar is not currently active, it means that quasars can die extremely quickly, in about 200,000 years if TFA is correct. That's a blink of an eye in astronomic terms.

It also counts as physical evidence for black holes evaporating, which is good.

Re:And for those not interested in reading TFA

[Kilrah_il]

You can find out a bit more information here [discovermagazine.com].

Detailed Explanation

[Waveney]

For a detailed explanation see Bill Keels post http://blogs.zooniverse.org/galaxyzoo/2011/01/10/hannys-voorwerp-and-hubble-what-did-we-learn/ [zooniverse.org]

Re:This was identified in Futurama

[uberjack]

"Melllvar" has 3 "L"'s. One would hope that you'd done enough Star Trek conventions to know how to spell "Melllvar"