2:48pm UK, Wednesday January 12, 2011
A new picture may help scientists unravel the mystery of a vast green blob discovered in a galaxy millions of light years away.
Stargazers unravel the mystery of the glowing green blob. Picture: NASA
Experts at Nasa believe the phenomenon may be giving birth to new stars, in a remote area of the universe where stars were not expected to form.
The blob was discovered by a young Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel in 2007, and was named Hanny's Voorwerp (or Hanny's object).
It is the only visible part of a streamer of gas stretching around the galaxy, called IC 2947.
In the picture, taken by the Hubble space telescope, the greenish Voorwerp is visible because a beam of light from the galaxy's core illuminated it.
Hanny's Voorwep stretches across a part of the galaxy the size of the Milky Way.
This beam came from a quasar - a bright, energetic object powered by a black hole. The quasar may have turned off about 200,000 years ago
The youngest stars are believed to be a couple of million years old.
Dr Bill Keel, professor of astronomy at The University of Alabama and leader of the Hubble study, said: "The star clusters are localised, confined to an area several thousand light years wide."
The Hubble telescope picked up the green object hundreds of light years away.
The collection of gases is roughly the size of our Milky Way galaxy and its bright green colour comes from oxygen.
The gassy discovery lies some 650 million light years away.
Each light year is about six trillion miles.
Hanny van Arkel was part part of a worldwide Galaxy Zoo project where people are invited to join and help look at archived star photographs to find and list new objects.
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