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Galaxy Zoo Produces a Rare Specimen
We discussed the Galaxy Zoo project soon after it launched last summer. Science News is now following developments about an odd celestial object
that is fueling a lot of excitement among astronomers around the world. In August, a Dutch schoolteacher named Hanny, in the process of characterizing galaxy images, noticed a peculiar object and posted a query about it on the Galaxy Zoo blog. She called it a "Voorwerp," which Science News says is Dutch for "thing" but which Google translates as "subject." Hanny's Voorwerp emits mostly green light (the earlier report said blue). The best guess astronomers have now is that the Voorwerp is emitting "ghost light," i.e. it is "lit by the ultraviolet light and X-rays from a quasar that has vanished in the last 100,000 years," to quote astronomer Bill Keel. "As far as we can tell, it's an unprecedented thing," Keel added. Researchers are scrambling to book time on the Hubble and other major telescopes to get a closer look.
Voorwerp is 'thing' in Dutch. But when you would like to say 'thing' in Dutch, you would obviously use 'ding'.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
The correct translation would be 'object'. I can understand the confusion with 'subject', but Dutch people would then say 'onderwerp', never 'voorwerp'.
To follow the story of the Voorwerp see the following entries in the Galaxy Zoo Blog: http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/01/18/more-on-the-voorwerp http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/01/31/the-mystery-of-the-voorwerp-deepens http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/03/20/voorwerp-fever http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/05/30/whats-an-astronomers-favourite-birthday-gift
It isn't a hotlink:
http://images.slashdot.org/articles/08/06/voorwerp-wht1.jpg
An image hosted on your server and placed inside an anchor tag is called a 'link'. Putting an image hosted on another server inside an image tag is a 'hotlink'.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
for the first part, ... z = 6.96.", and if i interpret the formulas there correctly, emittedWavelength = observedWavelength / (z + 1), so if this thing has the maximum known redshift and the observed wavelength is say 550nm, then the emitted wavelength would be about 70nm or 7e-6cm, so pretty well in the UV.
according to wikipedia, "the highest confirmed spectroscopic redshift of a galaxy is
for the second part, atoms emit across a wide range of wavelengths.
so it's more a matter of how much energy is driving the emission.
No.
Its because those pics only use 3 of the 5 colour channels.
As there are no R/G/B sensors, everything is an approximation.
Some of the early ones looked blue, even though green would be a better optical equivalent (most likely because they weighted some near UV radiation as blue)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
'Voorwerp' would be most accurately traslated as 'Object'.
The Hubble, however, will most definitely not.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Voorwerp is actually an odd word now that I really think about it. It is both generic, which is why it can be properly translated as "thing", and specific, in that it implies a purpose in the item it refers to (the exact purpose to be determined by the context it is used in). It can be translated as tool, thing, object, or item depending on the context it is used in.
Example uses of voorwerp, which all have different translations:
lijdend voorwerp - object (in grammar)
meewerkend voorwerp - dative case
gevonden voorwerpen - lost & found (typically referring both to the items and the booth/office to reclaim them)
onbekend vliegend voorwerp - unidentified flying object
Regarding the context of TFA, there is a very subtle implication which gets lost in whatever translation you may attempt: voorwerp implies a solid (crafted) object, which is why "thing" is the best translation in this case. It is very odd to refer to a celestial cloud as a solid item, and it says a lot about the peculiarity of the voorwerp...
Bill Keel has made a page devoted to Hanny's Voorwerp with links to relevant sites; all the current data can be accessed from here: http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/voorwerp.html
p.s. Hi Waveney!
It's a redshift of 0.05 - six or seven hundred million light years away. We also have spectra of the voorwerp, so we know something about the atoms that make it up. You'll see some of these spectra at http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/03/20/voorwerp-fever/ with the elements emitting the lines labelled.
http://www.astr.ua.edu.nyud.net/keel/research/voorwerp.html
GAAH!
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/24/1335258
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"Isn't this celestial thing going to be out there and available for, say, the next few million years or so?" --- If the current theory is correct, what we see is the result of an event that has long since ended - the glow of the Voorwerp being a "light echo". This means that the energy provided by the initial event could cease at any time, changing the nature of the Voorwerp. Also, the earler it is investigated, the better chance we have of understanding the true nature of the original event.
Sadly, the image is not in the RSS feed. This follows the age old practice of also not including the in-article links in RSS, requiring unnecessary extra clicks and bandwidth usage.
The Dutch verb "fokken" means "to breed"; "fokkerij" is a place where animals are bred.
The original Sloan Digital Sky Survey image in which Hanny noticed the object that was to become known as "Hanny's Voorwerp" was shown as blue - indeed her post querying it was headed "What's The Blue Stuff Below?" (Below the galaxy that was the focus of the image). Members of the Galaxy Zoo team ran spectrum checks & realised that it was unique; further investigation showed that while the SDSS colour filtration system showed it as blue, the green we see in the top picture is a more accurate representation. So Google (& others) appear to be using an image of the Voorwerp as it was first discovered, whilst /. are obviously somewhat more alive to the current state of affairs... (& if that blatant plug for /. isn't worth a point I don't know what is...)