Hanny van Arkel, a 25-year-old school teacher, discovered a new celestial body while classifying galaxies at the amateur astronomy site, galaxyzoo.com.
The object she discovered is a ghostly looking green gas cloud, seen in the picture to the right that astronomers believe is a distant cloud of hot gas that is 16,000 light years across. The object was named after Hanny van Arkel, the Hanny Voorwerp, "object" in Dutch.
Hanny van Arkel does not have a background in astronomy and had only been using the galaxyzoo.com site for one week before she found the voorwerp. Galaxyzoo.com asks for the public’s help in classifying galaxies and stars from a database of over a million images. Scientists say that the work from over 150,000 amateur contributors on the project is accurate and helpful.
Hanny van Arkel’s discovery gives merit to "armchair astronomers" who have looked up at the stars since before professional astronomers were established. Visit www.galaxyzoo.com to see if you too can contribute to the astronomical community.
Source: CNN