Hanny Van Arkel's Astronomical Discovery

Dutch School Teacher Spots New Intergalactic Object on Galaxy Zoo Web Site

Hanny Van Arkel is not an astrophysicist or an astronomer. She does not even own a telescope. But that did not stop the 25-year-old school teacher living in Harleen in the Netherlands from making a startling astronomical discovery, thanks to a website called Galaxy Zoo.

Hanny Van Arkel was pouring over photographs of galaxies on the Galaxy Zoo Internet site when she noticed a bright, gaseous mass with a hole in the center. Hannah Van Arkel duly posted a query about the object on the Galaxy Zoo web site. 

Galaxy Zoo is the brainchild of Yale University's Kevin Schawinski and Oxford's Chris Lintott. The idea was the post a millions images of the night sky taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico and to ask the public to help classify the galaxies thus imaged; elliptical, spiral, or other. The human eye is much more sensitive than a computer at discerning patterns such as those of galaxies. Galaxy Zoo has garnered the help of hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers eager to help in the classification effort.

Hanny Van Arkel's discovery, now called Hanny's Voorwerp or "Hanny's Object" is thought to be a circle of hot gas with a hole in the middle about 16,000 light years across and illuminated by a nearby quasar. Various Earth bound telescopes are attempting to image the object and the Hubble space telescope is scheduled to turn its mirror on Hanny's Voorwerp next year.

Anyone can log on to Galaxy Zoo and help in classifying galaxies imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope. There is a tutorial that helps the amateur astronomy distinguish between a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy. A spiral galaxy has a central bulge and spiral arms, much like our own Milky Way Galaxy. An elliptical galaxy has only the bulge with no disk or spiral arms.

Galaxy Zoo is currently encouraging its participants to help classify a series of merging galaxies. Merging galaxies, as the name suggests, are two galaxies that have or are in the process of crashing together. Many large galaxies are thought to be the result of two smaller galaxies crashing together.