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.
Wonderful! This was what I signed on for in Zoo 1. Good Catch Hanny! (I was away for a while, but am back now for the Spring, and looking forward to coming across something ubercool like Hanny’s.)
Question(s): I am sure I just missed it, (I didn’t see that question from anyone else, so I think that must have just missed it or not understood where to find the info) but what is its distance, speed, and rate of acceleration?
Can you view it at other wavelengths and get a relative red shift at different points in the Voorwerp to see if it is expanding around a common point as well as away from us? You could then construct a 3D model of it to see if it obeys gravitational laws and find out what it looks like from different lines of sight. That would be interesting.
I think its a dark galaxy, a bit like an evil twin perhaps.
The hole in the Voorwerp looks about the same size as the middle of the spiral galaxy, maybe the blueness is just blueshifted light reflecting off dust particles.
Looking at the new WHT image, you can almost see an outline to the blue stuff that mimicks the disc shape of the galaxy next to it. Also, the distribution of the blue stuff seems to mirror the star locations in the adjacent galaxy.
Failing that, do stars sneeze?
What does “redshift” mean?
i think it could be like the Northern Lights- but bigger.
Yeh i think that it should be XxQ5%Z/pie= 502squared over pie xs 2!! Or bigger!
Amazing, I think all of this is facinating! Having been a recent convert to the Zooite way of life, the Voorwerp has really inspired me, although I seem to have many more questions than answers. I wanted to see what I could find out from the pictures so I took the two best images from the website of the Voorwerp and laid the 4.5 WHT over the HeII image. I also had a look at the split channels from the 4.5 WHT image. A few interesting things showed up, (at least for me,) perhaps they’re not as remarkable as they appear. (I do understand that we may not be looking at the original images, so the following may be fatally flawed.)
1. This Voorwerp really covers a huge area if everything that shows up on the green (blue) filter is part of it. A very faint blue extends upwards of the main element to a point higher than the main galaxy. Thus it would seem to cover a greater area than the entire super massive galaxy to its right. Wow!!!
2. On the 4.5 WHT image, whilst the green (blue) and red (green) channels line up perfectly, there is a slight shift in alignment of the i-band (red) channel to down and right, for most of the objects. Yet this shift in the filters doesn’t seem to occur for the Voorwerp. (I thought red-shift referred to a colour’s hue adjusting toward the red part of the spectrum, so I don’t understand why this is happening.)
3. Unrelated to the Voorwerp, there appear to be ‘hotspots’ that show up on the HeII, but not on the 4.5 WHT, and vice versa. For instance the three most prominent red spots on the 4.5 WHT. Why is that?
4. On 4.5 WHT, there appears so be a very faded miniture version of the Voorwerp, but on the red filter (green in image), adjacent (down and right,) to the smaller galaxy just down from the main super massive galaxy. Is this correct, or is it just a smudge?
I would be very interested to find out. I guess I’m hooked for good. It’s projects like this that give me faith in Humanity’s altruism.
HEY!!! That’s my home…effectionately known as Spikruilniderculp…
I’m still at primary school but I think the stars are full of wonders. I think the vorweep is extremely intresting and one of these things in the galaxy that is full of wonders. I deeply congratulate the person who discovered it…
WELL DONE!!!
How do we know how far away the Voowerp is? Closer would appear larger. It’s a 2d image. How do they know its not just beyond mars or something? All I can think of is that they can approximately triangulate from multiple telescopes, but since the edges are nebulous… Please explain.
The ‘distance’ question is answered on the second link in at the top of this article (http://www.galaxyzooblog.org/2008/01/18/more-on-the-voorwerp/)
The ‘redshift’, as revealed in the ’spectrum’ is a bit like a visual version of the ‘doppler’ effect whereby the apparent pitch of a fire engine siren, for instance, changes as the vehicle moves past you, caused by perceived ‘wavelength stretching’… I think…
active galactic nucleus-may be
Dollars to donuts that’s a free floating hypermass that’s attracted some intergalactic gas. We’ve seen a lot of different mergers. Bt what about a galaxy collision, where one of the hypermasses loses its “galaxy”, and retains only a portion of the mass that would have been seen as the bulge.
I’m a biochemist by training, so I know very little about astrophysics, maybe in another life I would have been. I just signed up for this because I think it’s amazing.
Someone was asking about redshift. I am almost done reading a nice book called “Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe” by Simon Singh. He traces the history of studying time, cosmos, scientists and theorists and most relevant theories & discoveries & flops but does so in simple English so people like me can understand it without all of the technical jargon for the pros. Check this book out!
I am not a big drinker I usually have one glass of white wine for supperand that’s my limit,but there arealwaysacceptions
to any rule. Last eavening my wife was at her quillting group and I found my self consuming a third glass of wine. I am an accountant but everone else in my family is a PHD,this results in very deep discusions in the family.I have read allmost every scientific Ammerican in the last 50 years.I inderstand about .01% of it but it keeps my mind active. My theory is about antimater (can it explain the blue spot?)After consuming my third glass of wine I commpleted my antimater theory (It also effects the big bang) We know that antimater exists;so if there are black holes there must be anitmater black holes. This indicates that there are three kinds of “mater”. Mater 1 & 2 which are anti maters to each other and the #3 which is the mater we see.What we see is interaction between 2 mirror maters and it has been going on for about 14 billion years.
Very odd, it looks like a dancing ghost.
With regard to Hanny’s Voorwerp, it looks amazingly similar to something I found while playing with the Worldwide Telescope. At first I thought it might have been a photographic anomaly as these are common, particularly when a passing aircraft’s flashing lights illuminate the mirror of the telescope taking the long exposure photograph. But in many of these you can see the instrument package at the ’scope’s focus silhouetted in the image if you enlarge the image enough. In this case, I couldn’t tell for sure that it was a photo anomaly. It was the blue color that caught my eye in Hanny’s object – same as the critter I found. In any case, if anyone wants to look at my critter, SIMBAD has a Quasar (among other objects) in the same location. It’s ID is 2MASSJO7332861+2708513. In the Worldwide Telescope I have it’s location as RA 7:33:42 and Dec +27:05:19. Go deep to find it. Have Fun!
Maybe the object is behind it, and there is a lot of dust/gas in between the two objects. Only a certain type of light is getting through, the rest is being reflected away.
Or… that big bright thing to the south of the main galaxy is what remains of the core of the other galaxy, the debris of which, is the blue object. A galaxy collision that was so close, the denser portion of the smaller galaxy was pulled back into about larger one, and the ‘arm’(s) were left drifting off.
If the first galaxy was a single arm galaxy, and it hit ‘just right’, that could be the outcome.
My head hurts!
Could it be a space carribean?
Could it be a stream of antimatter ejected from the galactic center heating up the He? The Milky Way has a cloud of antimatter particles in its center – a lopsided one at that. This old story from the NY Times also seems relevant. Has this been imaged in the gamma ray band?
Any chance of getting Hubble or Spitzer to image this thing?
Apparently,
concerning Hubble time
Now that is exciting! Happy birthday Hanny!
It clearly isn’t a galaxy merger else there would be stars in the mysterious cloud.
My first instinct is that it is a polar jet ramming into an intergalactic cloud of diffuse gas. But, why don’t we see the jet itself and where is the jet for the opposite direction? Maybe something ran directly into the black hole at the center of the parent galaxy and blasted out material only to one side like a meteor throws up a plume when it impacts.
My next idea is it looks like an out of control object that is spewing material. I have had this image emblazoned in my mind since I was a child and the loop in the material is eerily similar.
http://projects.olin.edu/ahs/HOT2004/Failure/images/ChallengerExplosion.jpg
I’m curious about the concentrations of HeII is it standard background concentrations or is it higher indicating the material comes from previous fusion activity?
Maybe an active core it spewing energy that is reacting with a cloud of gas on one side of the galaxy. The blue structure looks a bit like the ribbon a gymnast twizzles on the end of a stick. Can it be from the rotation of the “parent” galaxy?
surely its very easy! its a barcelona player sprinting to score….wow ! cant you spot the ball? now tell me, what is his name? hint : observe the left leg…
God is Great! The Universe is very exciting. We may not know now what VoorWerp really is…what will happen if one were to travel through it….what is looks anatomically from the inside…
The Universe is such a beautiful expanse of the mysterious unknown…
Fahamy
Singapore
This may be our first observation of a colliding sum
of high dense matter,(i.e. multiple black holes),
competing for core formation of a new giant Galaxy.
Which explains the size(Milky Way Size) of the
annexed Mega Giant Galaxy in abutment to it.
Is it only me who’s realised that the Voorwerp matches the galaxy next to it? I mean, they seem to be exactly the same size and mirror each others features, bright spot in the galaxy, bright spot in the ‘werp etc. Surely its just a light echo of some kind.
Maybe the galaxy next to the Voorwerp is so large that it’s actually twisting spacetime around a smidge.
I have a few observations.
1) The contrast in color spectra imply the Voorwerp is not close to the spiral galaxy that appears nearby so it is unlikely the two are related. In all probability, the Voorwerp is much closer, located in our galaxy.
2) The twisted shape implies an uneven distribution of energy and mass. There is some cohesion but no clear center of gravity.
3) It appears to be unraveling not collapsing. The shape is not consistent with indications of a collapse.
4) The consistency of color saturation is remarkable as is even the distribution of the HeII signature.
Wouldn’t HeII be more common as the by-product of a Sol-like star than an exploding giant? To me, it is as if a smaller star unravelled. Could a dwarf star reach a point at the end of its life where it explodes rather than burn out?
If anyone noticed there is a brighter speck on the tip of the voorwerp. I suspect that this could be a region of stars (which will probably by quite old) that once belong to a galaxy (call it galaxy X) but got ripped up by tidal interations of other nearby galaxys, and this could be the remant of the galaxy X that got torn apart.
The hole at could be the supermassive blackhole that would have once situated itself at the heart of galaxy X, just like virtually all other galaxys, but is now exposed as the stars, planets, gases and dust cloud are absent.
My theory for why voorwerp has a blue hue to it is that it might be consisted of inoised nitrogen which gives of a blue-purple glow when excited with electromagnetisism. Supporting my theory stated above, this can be the remant of galaxy X and that a AGN (Active Galatic Nuclei) can shoot streams of particles towards the cloud and excite it sufficiently to give of radiation in the visible spectrum but this is unlikely because the photographed galaxy does seem to have jets of any sort coming out of its core, otherwise is would have outshone the galaxy and a nearby radius of about 100,000 light years or maybe even more.
But to determine any of this we will need to get the age and composition of voorwerp or anything thinking done will only be hypothesising about the very basics of the nature of this thing which will not lead us very far. Secondly, we will need a full Spectroscopic analysis of the object or else, again, it won’t take us far when we’re just guessing about everything with no evidence to support it. We can also use measure the redshift of voorwerp and create a 3D model for it and we can look at it from different viewpoints so we can study more about it.
Thats actually a blue giant that exploded and it is almost the same size as that galaxy.Ithink =)
a blue giant is the first formation of the sun
what mght cuase th blue giant to explode?it can be caused by a comet or astroid or too much helium or hydrogene
or maybe, the hubble space telescope is broken because of rays of the sun
Just got the idea that this might be the first clues of the exsistance of a ‘White Hole’. As their name suggests, its the opposite of a black hole and it emits rather than consumes matter.
Einstein and other physists have shown that if white holes do exsist, they are unstable and that negative matter is need to support it (much like wormholes, again, if they exsist). if negative matter is not present, then the white hole will collapse into a black hole and consume the matter that it generated
This might be true because as we can see from the image taken by WHT there is a clearly defined hole in the voorwerp and that this may be the black hole that resulted from the collapse of the white hole.
If white holes exsist, they will shake the foundations of astrophysics and it might help towards the creation of the Theory of Everthing
Well space is infinate right? so that means that there has GOT to be weird and wonderful things out there. The Voorwerp is just one that has caught our eyes!
It Is amazing This Sort Of Thing exsits
This is awesome!
Hi
Have just found this web site today, think I,m hooked already.
It remind’s me of fleas living on the nose of a big dog, wondering what the strainge glowing gas is coming out of the other end of the dog.
Sorry folks, as you can see I have lots to catch up on, am interested in the book, Big Bang, the origin of the universe by Simmon Singh. Will check this book out
My thanks to Zephin
Looks to me like, the brighter galaxies center emissions, blew the hole through the other galaxy remnant. What do you think?
I think it may be an answer to more about objects in our galaxy unknown to mankind so far…
It’s possible that two galaxies could collide at a high enough speed that one of their black holes could follow a hyperbolic orbit and be flung free from the galaxy. It would then be a very large, bare black hole that would create a source of x-rays. This could illuminate nearby gas and make itself visible. One way to confirm its existence would be evidence of spiral rotation, rings or cones in the pattern of the excited gas. If we had a closer look we might be able to see this.
Space may have light producing gas clouds
possibly an irregularly shaped nebula?
i think this is supercool and all that, but we need more info before any theories can be proven. could this be somr sort of light reflecting thing, kind of like a mirror?
you can tell im not a sciency-person, still in gradeschool. ill keep researching
I think it might be a bunch of goop.
I am facing an image of formation of an elliptical galaxy and see it similar to a training Voorwerp. Would this phenomenon on the formation of galaxies?
Grateful.
Were the objects 3C321 and MS0735 clues that could help solve the mystery of WOORWERP?