Space blob is giving birth to new stars
Source: Agencies |
January 12, 2011, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE Hubble Space Telescope got its first peek at a mysterious giant green blob in outer space and found that it is strangely alive.
The glowing blob is giving birth to new stars, in remote areas of the universe where stars do not normally form.
It was discovered by Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel in 2007 and is named Hanny's Voorwerp. Voorwerp is Dutch for object.
NASA released the new Hubble photo Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Washington.
Parts of the green blob are collapsing and the resulting pressure from that is creating the stars. The stellar nurseries are outside of a normal galaxy, which is usually where stars live.
That makes these "very lonely newborn stars" that are "in the middle of nowhere," said Bill Keel, the University of Alabama astronomer who examined the blob.
The blob is the size of the Milky Way and it is 650 million light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles.
The blob is mostly hydrogen gas swirling from a close encounter of two galaxies; it glows because it is illuminated by a quasar in one of the galaxies. A quasar is a bright object full of energy powered by a black hole.
The blob was discovered by van Arkel as part of the Galaxy Zoo project where everyday people can look at archived star photographs to catalog new objects.
Since van Arkel's discovery, astronomers have looked for similar gas blobs and found 18 of them. But all are about half the size of Hanny's Voorwerp, Keel said.
The glowing blob is giving birth to new stars, in remote areas of the universe where stars do not normally form.
It was discovered by Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel in 2007 and is named Hanny's Voorwerp. Voorwerp is Dutch for object.
NASA released the new Hubble photo Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Washington.
Parts of the green blob are collapsing and the resulting pressure from that is creating the stars. The stellar nurseries are outside of a normal galaxy, which is usually where stars live.
That makes these "very lonely newborn stars" that are "in the middle of nowhere," said Bill Keel, the University of Alabama astronomer who examined the blob.
The blob is the size of the Milky Way and it is 650 million light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles.
The blob is mostly hydrogen gas swirling from a close encounter of two galaxies; it glows because it is illuminated by a quasar in one of the galaxies. A quasar is a bright object full of energy powered by a black hole.
The blob was discovered by van Arkel as part of the Galaxy Zoo project where everyday people can look at archived star photographs to catalog new objects.
Since van Arkel's discovery, astronomers have looked for similar gas blobs and found 18 of them. But all are about half the size of Hanny's Voorwerp, Keel said.
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