Hubble Snaps Sharpest-Ever Photo of Dead Green Quasar

[The Straight Story]

Hubble Snaps Sharpest-Ever Photo of Dead Green Quasar



The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the eerie, green-glowing gas highlighted by a recently deceased quasar.

The Milky-Way-sized object, located about 730 million light-years away, surrounds a supermassive black hole that was once the heart of a galaxy.

The black hole gobbled up its last available meal of gas and dust as a quasar between 45,000 and 70,000 years ago, ionizing oxygen in distant gas clouds into a bright green glow before fading back into darkness. The glowing gas cloud, known as Hanny’s Voorwerp, is now 100 to 10,000 times dimmer than the quasar was when it was still devouring matter.


The green object is named after Hanny van Arkel, the Dutch schoolteacher who discovered it in 2007 while helping classify more than 60 million galaxies for the Galaxy Zoo project.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/hannys-voorwerp-quasar-hubble/#

[DainBramaged]

1. Crunchy frog in space?

[leveymg]

2. The undersea quality of this image evokes the cut on Pink Floyd's Meddle album, "Echoes."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6iwrBlb1Bo&feature=related

[FSogol]

3. Cool, thanks for posting. n/t

[AsahinaKimi]

4. So THATS where the

Green Lanterns came from!!