Community | January 11, 2011 | 0 comments

Space Oddity

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ramanan50
In this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, an unusual, ghostly green blob of gas appears to float near a neighboring spiral galaxy.

The bizarre object, dubbed Hanny’s Voorwerp (Hanny’s Object in Dutch), is the only visible part of a 300,000-light-year-long streamer of gas stretching around the galaxy, called IC 2947. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a beam of light from the galaxy’s core illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar–a bright, energetic object powered by a black hole. The quasar may have turned off about 200,000 years ago.
http://ramanan50.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/6637/
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    Community,   Space,   Weird Science
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    Space Milky Way European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope 6 more
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