a highly sensitive camera able to peer deeper into the
depths of space and through galactic dust at infrared
the CANDELS program, never before seen pictures of
distant galaxies have been obtained. These are far
older and more distant than anything seen before.
The infra-red images are very different from those taken
in the visible light spectrum showing distinctive hidden
structures of these galaxies (see image #6). However
there are so many pictures available from the CANDELS
Survey that Zooites have been called upon again for
their help in closely inspecting and classifying them. The
advantages of global citizen science outreach can be
leveraged again with built in independent cross checks
in classifying newly discovered and far distant galaxies.
The Zooite community is instrumental in adding to our
sum knowledge of the observable universe.
Serendipitous and unexpected discoveries lie at the
heart of each Galaxy Zoo project. Undoubtedly one of
the most surprising and now famous discoveries made
in recent years was by a volunteer citizen scientist and
would have been made by an automated computer
programme, Ms Van Arkel spied an unknown object
the Galaxy Zoo team to this discovery, now named
“Hanny’s Voorwerp”, and they immediately began
to observe this mysterious green object with other
colleagues and even employed the Hubble Space
Telescope itself (see image #7).
The conclusion was that this object is an intensely
hot cloud of gas of around 50 thousand degrees Kelvin
but rather puzzlingly with very few stars. The hottest
stars are very young, probably only a few million years
old and lie at the top most and brightest part of the
“voorwerp” or green cloud lies on the trajectory of
so it has been theorised that the star formation in the
Image #6: Older, distant and ‘hidden’ galaxies. Credit: NASA/Boris Haeussler
what of the cloud itself?
Data from Hubble has been analysed and suggest
a traumatic merger of two or more galaxies formed
Out of this, a colossal tail of gas stretched a million light
accreted around the new galaxy’s central black hole,
enough to form a quasar. This illuminated and ionized
52
52
Image #7: A Zooite discovery and a mysterious object: Hanny’s Voorwerp
which can be seen below spiral galaxy IC2497.
Credit: NASA/ESA/W. Keel/Galaxy Zoo Team/Hubble Space Telescope
the gas creating the Voorwerp cloud. A million years
ago, it blew the material adrift as the galaxy core
began to fade. The Voorwerp is now a castoff, a ghostly
survivor of the past.
This story illustrates the power of outreach and citizen
science. One person’s serendipitous discovery has
directed the attention of world astronomers, scientists
and marshalled their tools to examine an object that
would otherwise have been missed if we relied solely
on computers. The community of Zooites has many
more discoveries to be found.
This global community of citizen scientists can
connect with the project team leaders on their blog
(http://blog.galaxyzoo.org/), in Google + Hangouts
and Twitter (@galaxyzoo). There is also a Galaxy Zoo
forum available for everyone to discuss any and all
topics (www.galaxyzooforum.org/). Talk Galaxy Zoo is
another place for Zooites to gather share and discuss
their data (http://talk.galaxyzoo.org/). More universal
mysteries than we know are being gathered, more
questions are being asked about the history and
evolution of galaxies and the stars within. You could
be one of those million or so volunteers helping and
cosmos itself.
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