Hanny's Object

by Alex Rieneck

There are a lot of things that you can use the net for, and, if you are reading this you probably know more than a few of them, but I bet you didn't know that you can use the Internet to go down in real world history as a famous astronomer.

Enter the case of Hanny van Arkel, a primary school teacher from the Netherlands. One day Hanny was using Galaxyzoo.org to browse through deep space photos. Galaxy Zoo has a really good idea, it archives deep space images that have been taken over the last few decades and allows users to search the pictures in far greater detail than real astronomers have time to, a lot like the SETI project, but Galaxy Zoo uses actual human inputs and minds rather than vacant CPU cycles. In any event, one day Hanny van Arkel found a strange green object in one of the pictures. She posted the image, and fame quickly found her and her strange discovery. The strange green object is now known as "Hanny's Voorwerp" (Hanny's object) and is thought to be a Quasar that has "turned off" leaving a huge cloud of 10,000 degree Celsius gas behind it and Hanny's Object is of such interest to astronomers that the Hubble Space telescope will soon be focusing on it to provide more detailed images. Soon, at a guess, "Hanny's Voorwerp" will probably become as well known an image as the Horsehead Nebula is, and amazingly enough, all this was achieved with a few simple clicks on the internet... and a human mind.

For more information about this story (including pictures of Hanny's Object and Hanny herself) follow this link to the Astronomy.com site.