A couple weeks ago, I talked about the Voorwerp (”object”), the strange blue object that Hanny posted to the Galaxy Zoo forum. She asked if anyone knew what it was, and we sure didn’t. Part of the problem was that we didn’t have a spectrum for it, so it could have been literally anywhere from right next door in our galaxy to the edge of the universe. Our colleague Bill Keel took a spectrum, which he posted about here in the blog, and found that the Voorwerp is associated with the galaxy above it. We’ve since been looking around for other colleagues that can help us figure out what the Voorwerp is.
Thanks to Matt Jarvis, who was observing at the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, we’ve been able to get some better images. The William Herschel Telescope is bigger than the telescope that gathers images for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS is 2.4 m; WHT is 4.2 m), and the images that Matt took are longer exposures, so we can see fainter features in them. The conditions were also quite good (good “seeing” in astronomer’s lingo) and so the image has very good resolution (it’s “sharper”) as the atmosphere didn’t blur things too badly.
So what kind of data did we get? We got three images in filters very similar to the SDSS ones. We got a g, r and i-band image. Those correspond roughly to green, red and infra-red for human eyes. Just to make things confusing though, we colour g in blue, r in green and i in red to stay consistent with the SDSS/GZ images. Without further ado, here are the original SDSS and new WHT images:
Original SDSS image
New WHT image
The WHT image is rotated with respect to the SDSS image; look at the orientation of the galaxy and the Voorwerp to see how they compare. Once you mentally rotate the images so they match, you can see clearly that the Voorwerp is quite a lot bigger than we initially thought, because so much of it was too faint to be visible in the SDSS image. This immediately makes us want to get an even deeper g-band (blue colour) image to see just how much bigger it is! For that, we will probably go to the world’s largest telescopes such as ESO’s Very Large Telescopes, Gemini or Keck.
To give you an idea just how big the Voorwerp is by now, look at the spiral galaxy next to it. This galaxy is a very massive spiral galaxy, likely as big or bigger than our own Milky Way! That’s really, really big!
If you look at the new WHT image of the Voorwerp, you can also see a huge, gaping hole. From the SDSS images, it wasn’t really clear whether the fuzzy structure there was anything real, but the WHT image makes it clear that this is a genuine hole. Again, just to put it into proportion, that hole has a diameter of something like 10 000 light-years. We have no good idea of what could punch such a large hole. One possibility is that a massive burst of star formation occurred there, causing a string of powerful supernova explosions, causing an expanding bubble. Such holes presumably caused by supernovae have been seen in other galaxies, but as far as we know, nothing anywhere near this size.
In his last post, Bill mentioned that the spectrum of the Voorwerp showed some very odd emission lines, in particular Helium II (HeII) and Neon V. HeII only really appears in spectra when there is something really hot around to excite the gas – something hotter than the hottest star. This could be an active galactic nucleus(i.e. gas falling into a supermassive black hole, and heating up as it falls), or perhaps some high velocity shocks. We’re busy analysing the spectrum to understand better what’s going on here.
By a luck coincidence, the Voorwerp turned out to be at a redshift where the HeII line “redshifted” into a common narrow-band filter. Such a filter blocks all light except in a very narrow wavelength range, and so lets us take an image focusing only on those areas which are emitting light in that wavelength range. Below is the image of the Voorwerp in the wavelength range of the HeII line:
The Voorwerp in HeII
The HeII emission clearly comes from a good chunk of the whole Voorwerp (again,a deeper image might show even more), so whatever is exciting the gas in the Voorwerp seems to do it over quite a large volume.
What’s next? We really still have no idea of what the Voorwerp really is. The more data we take on it, the stranger it gets. Many of us are busy trying to convince friends of ours on observing runs to take observations of the Voorwerp so we can figure out what it is.
That’s how an observational science like astrophysics works: you find something new, you don’t know what it is, so you take more data to try and understand it better and form some hypothesis about what’s actually going on and then you confirm it with more data. But we’re still at the very start of this process. The mystery deepens… *cue scary music.
There is a theory that claims classical physics applies at all levels and seeks to displace Quantum Mechanics as the most successful theory we have to date.
http://www.blacklightpower.com/new.shtml
It has two predictions that might (I said might!) apply to the Voorwerp:
The first prediction is that black holes can reach a size where they spontaneously convert to energy. You can imagine what that would do to an existing galaxy – leaving a good galaxy sized hole with a hot gas cloud around the perimeter would be a likely result.
The second prediction is that gas clouds can provide an energetic energy source by the conversion of hydrogen to sub-ground radiii which the claimant calls a hydrino. What is interesting is that the claim involves, in one case, a resonant energy transfer between atomic hydrgoen and HeI, which results in HeII, a hydrino and the release of energy in the UV.
A potential third claim is that this hydrino is claimed to possess the properties attributed to dark matter – doesn’t emit visible light but has a gravitational effect.
Of course if he is right, everything we known about science is turned on its head. but the Voorwerp kind of did that already…
I think the Voorwerp has been ejected by this galaxy along the minor axis.
I think Halton C Arp should be asked for his opinion on it.
I don’t have a clue what it is, but I want it to be a white hole or wormhole because that would turn astrophysics on its head.
[QUOTE]To give you an idea just how big the Voorwerp is by now, look at the spiral galaxy next to it. This galaxy is a very massive spiral galaxy, likely as big or bigger than our own Milky Way! That’s really, really big!
If you look at the new WHT image of the Voorwerp, you can also see a huge, gaping hole. Again, just to put it into proportion, that hole has a diameter of something like 10000 light-years.[ENDQUOTE]
If that hole is around 10000 ly across and the adjacent galaxy is as big or bigger than ours, then the Voorwerp is considerably closer to us than the galaxy. As our Galaxy is 100000 ly, if you measure ten times the hole’s width, you will reach almost to the brighter of the two ellipticals on the the left of the image.
Did anyone ever think that perhaps the blue colour is cherenkov radiation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
Say, for example, that the blue light is cherenkov radiation, then that would suggest that the voorwerp is matter leftover from some explosion? the radiation itself would be caused by neutrinos or other quantum particle, released in the explosion, travelling faster than the average velocity of light (due to the slowing effect of the dense gravity and mass). The only problem with this I guess is the redshift… would that still occur in the presence of cherenkov?
suggestions…?
The mass that appears to be pulled toward that huge galaxy, from the center of the Voorwerp, looks like it would fill the hole perfectly. Could it be that the larger mass in the center of the Voorwerp is possibly heavier than the outer part and more vulnerable to the gravitational pull of the galaxy next door? Or, is there such thing as blowing a smoke ring on a galactic scale?
This is a Class I Transdimensional Conduit. It’s not the first of its kind ever observed, but certainly the largest. I feel sorry for anyone living in the galaxy nearby.
How many years would we have to wait to take another picture to make a 3d image?
Or rather , what tools are at our fingertips today to show dispersion patterns if there are any.
This is one of the things we want to use Hubble to do; by getting high-resolution spectra of different parts of the Voorwerp, we should be able to say something about how things are changing. If at all.
it might be another galaxy!!! who knows…
I saw that Mack has suggested this same thing, but for some reason when I first saw this, I thought, well maybe some kind of black hole. Then my mind strayed to Dark Matter for some reason.
Is it possible that some sort of radiation is “redshifting” the dark matter into the visible spectrum of light?
Pertaining to the Dark Matter theory though I would have no idea what would cause such a massive hole.
I saw a few posts that suggest a black hole, but like the article says, why is there no radiation? And then why did it just stop eating?
And I was wondering, what is the purple “face” in the first picture? It appears as a less dense, or simply not as bright dot in the second picture. Is it simply another galaxy we can see behind it?
why not contact nasa and the crew of the hubble, proposing a quick mission. im sure if you supply them with all your data most notably that we have no idea what this is, that they’ll want to investigate it. best of luck
A strange Click went into my head for a moment
For the Voorwerp, The size and consistant color of it could possibly mean a recent Black Hole, Consuming one a tenth, hundreth, even millionth of it own size,Causing it to implode and emit off Gasses that we maybe have never come across with because of how dangerouse and unstable it is to be so near planets or w.e
And for the GIGANTIC hole,
A star could be any size, from 5,000 lightyears across, to 100ly’s across, At the rate of its death it could have, expanded to 3, 4 or 5 times its size, and sizzled ANYTHING in its way, and causing many other strange plantets, or space junk in its path
Ok… read thru most posts… any luck on using Hubble? ESA? Also, do you know how uniform g band emission is across the object? Definitely the brighter confluence in the “NE” tip appears starlike, but not conclusive. This is absolutely amazing!
Since it ‘may’ fit the concept of a black hole that lost its gravitational pull, could the irregularity surrounding it be accounted by a non-symetrical explosion of the hole?
Here is the ‘out there’ theory.
The nearby galaxy is inhabited. The black hole was consuming a neighboring galaxy and would threaten the visible galaxy in short time.
The inhabitants of the intact galaxy found a way to destroy a black hole, creating an irregular discharge.
hi
i maybe just 14 but i have a theory could this be a fragment of an explosion soo far back in the past that it is a remnant of the “BIG BANG” and has been in the same spot for millions of years and as time passed a galaxy has formed near it?? ohh and btw i have send a e mail to the zoo keepers about some other strange objects i have seen in some images hope i get a reply > thanks
cool…
I dont understand why this is relevant to my life.
yeahhh im sooo hooked mannn !
screw this website for giving us homework
clouds of gases like rain clouds lit up by the stars
Ok.. this might sound weird.. but perhaps it’s like a vent for a black hole, or a worm hole….
Could it be Galaxy poop?
Could it be an intergalactic nebular that has newborn star clusters inside it that are emiting ultraviolet light,therefore lighting the nebula?
I’m only 11 but I think it could be a remenent of a massive hypernova explosion!
Could it an irregular galaxy?
Could it be one of those mystery dark galaxys with a gobular cluster passing though it?
Random thoughts, could there be some gravitational lensing effect going on around or affected by a heavy object – a bit like lense flare when you photograph towards the sun (our sun that is) and can light get a slingshot effect from a heavy object in the way that satellites can use planets to get a kick onwards? Could that provide a ‘blue shift’?
By looking at all three pictures I think it is getting closer and closer to the nearby galaxy. Because if this, it may be a black hole.
I think it is a dead galaxy. It’s a galaxy that collapsed some long time ago. Though the thingy about its effects on the matter around it is still baffling. But what it may be is something we have never encountered before in any photographs, I mean something like this may have been photographed in other images, but never noticed before. Notice, we have never seen dead galaxies before, unless black-holes are what they are. If in a spiral galaxy, all matter is being pulled to the center, then at some point the whole thing will blow up, or collapse to a black-hole. This may be the one that blew-up. Notice that on the far right there are traces of the same stuff it is made of, sort of drifting into deeper space.
Like someone else said, it may be something completely new (to us though).
These two how ever seem to be heading for a collision.
[...] Isn’t this a job for a computer? Actually no. Teaching a computer to recognise a nice, clean spiral isn’t too hard – teaching it to recognise fuzzy, unclear spirals of different sizes and shapes is really tricky. However, human beings are the best pattern identifiers in the known Universe. Their unique ability to recognise shapes, plus their ubiquity – there are billions of them after all – is a clever shortcut to this problem. Galaxy Zoo has used this to great effect, classifying stacks and stacks of galaxies producing some amazing science (like showing that the Universe does not have a preferred handedness, or discovering the strange Voorwerp). [...]
“*cue scary music” out..
there are obvious tells of gravitational lensing. maybe two super massive black holes came close to colliding but failed to merge. this would cause rips in time and space. maybe the blue shift is from this. and the hole an anti singularity.
How do you know that object is near the galaxy in the center of the image , and not in our milky way?
If it’s not so distant, it’s easy to explain (supernova, gaz …)
It looks a lot like space tornado’s to me, just from a different angle. I do however think the galaxy pictured is at the final stage of merging with another, any merging black holes would emit huge energy waves at the poles, which could possible explain gasses in the nearby universe being excited and whipped up in to a tornado.
Whatever the source, it just goes to show what exciting things can be found as a result of sharing information publicly.
High, i am an amateur astronomist. I have studied 2 yrs @ Leiden University. Could this be an effect of the superfluidity and superconductivity of helium in combination with high rotation velocities and BEC state ? Maybe a very high rotating velocity has reached one of the vortex values of the BEC state causing some sort of transfer in mass due to zero entropy energy emission which are influenced by the elecotromagnetic fields of the galaxy nearby? Frankly i do ot really undertand what i am saying here, but it sounds cool !
No really serious now: the dark spot could also be a quark star or strange star. I read this on wiki: It is theorized that when the neutron-degenerate matter which makes up a neutron star is put under sufficient pressure due to the star’s gravity, the individual neutrons break down into their constituent quarks, up quarks and down quarks. Some of these quarks may then become strange quarks and form strange matter. The star then becomes known as a “quark star” or “strange star”, similar to a single gigantic hadron (but bound by gravity rather than the strong force). Quark matter/strange matter is one candidate for the theoretical dark matter that is a feature of several cosmological theories.
Hi,
couldn’t it be some kind of “jet remnant”, i.e. the remains of a jet like in M87?
Stefan
Whatever the Voorwerp is, I’m just glad it isn’t that too close to home !!!!
Would be great to see if Nasa would use the Hubble on this intriguing puzzle though ….
Remnants of an artificially destroyed galaxy via novae. If this was a billion years ago couldn’t it be possible?
[...] 150,000 people are already participants and some have DISCOVERED never before seen objects like the Voorwerp, which was discovered by a school teacher who volunteered some of her free time to classifying [...]