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Hanny Van Arkel, a Dutch primary school teacher & amateur astronomer, discovered what is being called a ‘cosmic ghost.’ It is a very odd and strange gaseous object that has a hole in tha middle that could represent a new class of astronomical object. Hanny Van Arkel discovered this object while he was volunteering in tha Galaxy Zoo project, which accepts tha help of tha public to classify galaxies online. This find is nicknamed ‘Hanny’s Voorwerp’ which is Dutch for object. Soon after his find many scientists were looking at tha object thru their telescopes and wondering. “At first, we had no idea what it was. It could have been in our solar system, or at the edge of the universe,” Yale University astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski, who is a member & co-founder of the Galaxy Zoo team, said.”What we saw was really a mystery,” Schawinski said. “The Voorwerp didn’t contain any stars.” This ‘cosmic ghost’ is made entirely of a hot gas. The green object is illuminated by remnant light from tha nearby galaxy, IC 2497. “We think that in the recent past the galaxy IC 2497 hosted an enormously bright quasar,” Schawinski said. Schawinski said that light from tha past is still illuminating tha ghostly object. Although tha quasar shut down around 100,000 years ago & tha galaxy’s black hole just went quiet. Tha world is just getting more confusing scientifically as each day passes, first water found on tha moon and now this. “It’s this light echo that has been frozen in time for us to observe,” said Chris Lintott, who is a co-organizer of Galaxy Zoo at Oxford University in tha United Kingdom, said. Tha Hubble Space Telescope will be used to get a closer look very soon. Van Arkel said that it is amazing that this object has just been sitting there for decades and amateur volunteers spotted it online. Van Arkel is just 1 of more than 150,000 amateur astronomers that assisted in tha classifying more than 1 million galaxies over tha past year thru tha Galaxy Zoo project. Next tha Galaxy Zoo plans to ask volunteers to search for more unusual astronomical objects, so who knows what could be found? Go check out Galaxyzoo.org I just went thru and check it out and it is a pretty neat site. This was an amazing discovery..

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