Most Unusual Structures In The Universe: Hanny’s Voorwerp
A few years ago, a simple teacher discovered an object in space, the nature of which still remained a mystery. Only now are professional astronomers beginning to understand where this huge, glowing green cloud came from.
Let us recall that in 2007, a school teacher from the Netherlands, Hanny van Arkel (Hanny van Arkel), participating in the Galaxy Zoo project, discovered a very mysterious and even intriguing object, which was called the Hanny object (or in Dutch, Hanny’s Voorwerp). The object is a bright green BLOB of gas and dust located near a spiral galaxy in the Constellation of Leo minor.
Astronomers have never seen anything like this before. Having the size suitable for some not very small galaxy, the Hanny object is clearly not a galaxy, if only because there is not a single star observed in it. And most importantly: what makes the gas glow and why green?
The answers to these questions appeared only thanks to the work of Professor Robert Beswick and his colleagues from different European countries. The answers came after studying the spiral galaxy IC 2497, which lies near the Hanny object. Scientists have shown that, like most similar galaxies, IC 2497 contains a supermassive black hole in its active center. In it, of course, huge amounts of matter are “sucked”, which, falling into the depths of the hole, swirl like water at the sink drain.
Accelerating and incandescent, matter emits powerful streams of radiation, the flows of which are perpendicular to the plane of the spiral formed by it. According to astronomers, the Hanny object was just unlucky to be in the path of this “radiating gun”. Radiation ionizes the particles contained in this gas and dust cloud.
Before coming to this conclusion, astronomers were prevented by another cloud that closes the active center of the galaxy IC 2497 from us, not allowing us to observe it directly. The black hole had yet to be discovered from other indirect evidence. But now the explanation is given and it shows why until now such objects have not been noticed by astronomers. Radiation beams emanating from the active centers of galaxies are narrowly directed. And to get a cloud in the way of such a flow — the chances of this are quite small.
