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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.
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.
Actually, "object" is an even better translation of "voorwerp".
And it makes better sense in context too: "astronomers find mystery object" sounds find. "Astronomers find mystery thing" sounds stilted.
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.
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...
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.