- @
- Followers:
No Tweets Found
CNN POLITICS ON FACEBOOK » | CNN POLITICS ON TWITTER »
Hubble finds ghostly object in deep space
There's a green blob in space, but unlike a bad science fiction movie, it's not coming to take over Earth. Probably.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a green cloud of gas about 650 million light-years from Earth. It's been named Hanny's Voorwerp, Dutch for Hanny's Object.
The object is illuminated by a beam of light from a quasar that may have gone dark 200,000 years ago, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
The Voorwerp is about the size of our Milky Way galaxy and is part of a 300,000-light-year-long stream of gas, the institute says. The green color is from glowing oxygen.
What appears to be a gaping hole in Hanny's Voorwerp actually may be a shadow cast by an object in the quasar's light path, according to the institute.
"This phenomenon is similar to a fly on a movie projector lens casting a shadow on a movie screen," the institute says.
The object may have been formed by a collision of two galaxies, according to the institute.
But don't worry. It won't bump into our galaxy within our lifetime.
Probably.
On Twitter
On Twitter
@cnnbrk on Twitter
This has to be a Hollywood publicist's creation-just in time for the Green Hornet movie
This object may be 300,000 (insert correct unit of measure) long but it's certainly not miles...
If it's roughly the same size as the Milky Way galaxy then I'd say it can't be miles...!
Doh...!
The tidal tail is not in a galaxy, it surrounds a galaxy. It is not 300,000 miles long, it is 300,000 light years long.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/01/full/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp
I wish it would attack Earth, THAT would be exciting!
There's no way the meant 300,000 miles, the meant 300,000 light years probably, it's a typo.
This article was posted by CNN's Jim Kavanagh but did he write it or his 3rd grade child?
the mark of slytherin forming.
CNN/Google – Is it possible to overlay the area of origin for all these negative comments onto a map of the world?
It would go a long way in deciding where NOT to live.
It's a developing galaxy. http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/large/heic1102c.jpg
Another way to put it in perspective is that this "green blob" diameter is about 1.67 times the diameter of the Milkly Way galaxy. That would make it approx. 985,300,000,000,000,000 miles across!....which is actually huge for a single object that is not a galaxy. That is probably one reason why it made the news.
Oh also I know our milkyway galaxy isn't 300,000 light years, I believe it is about 100,000 light years across.
IT'S A KLINGON WARSHIP DECLOAKING !!!!
Uh, 300,000 miles from here is just a little farther than the moon's orbit.
Our sun is about 865,000 miles in diameter.
Our galaxy is about 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles across (diameter), and about 6,000,000,000,000,000 miles in thickness.
If you follow the link to the NASA site, it correctly states that the gas stream is about 300,000 light-years (not miles) long, or about 3 times the size of our galaxy.
I'm tired of reading inaccurate news... It's a hundred miles across...like the size of your house...probably.
A story about nothing, that is read because the headline leads you to think their is information in the article. But guess what. Psyche!!!!