A new class of astronomical object?
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Dutch primary school teacher and amateur astronomer has discovered what some are calling a "cosmic ghost," a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the middle that may represent a new class of astronomical object.

LINK:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...35229720080806

A no-fat donut?

Anyway, It would be nice to have a bit more details. It sounds like speculation from a single picture. They don't say if there are any depth clues, or other reasons to help identify it.

I'm not sure if it's the article, or the speculation. Either way, it wouldn't hurt to take a closer look.

It looks rather "nebulus" to me.

Actually; it looks more like a space frog.

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officially called: Hanny's Voorwerp (SDSS J094103.80+344334.2)

apparently, it is actually green, emitting a wavelength of 520 nanometers.
http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/voorwerp.html

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-work in progress--

It's been discussed in Universe Today, and a great deal of detail may be seen here. Not quite a single picture - multifilter images from four telescopes, spectra from two, satellite data in the UV and X-ray...Of course, one wouldn't realize any of this by the time a news story makes it through most outlets, and a healthy degree of skepticism is always wise when assessing press-release science. The fact that it was mentioned in a couple of reports already brings up an interesting issue of the best way to do public announcements in a project which is by its nature public and open.

Thanks; I assumed that since it was a new thread.......

Anytime I hear credit going to an amateur anything, I tend to think there's got to be either more detail going on, or it's just somebody saying "look at me". The press loves amatuers to relate to the average Joe.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

In this case, the backstory really is that good - in fact, the HST proposal review committee remarked that the public-outreach opportunities shouldn't be overlooked, which I've never seen done before. It turns out that Hanny tried Galaxy Zoo because she's a Brian May fan and he mentioned the project in his blog. The public and distributed nature of GZ meant that much of the initial speculation and data assessment played out in the Galaxy Zoo forum and blog posts in full view of anyone interested, which I think provided a good view of how science works "in process".

So this thread isn't about Space Ghost?

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Looks more like Kermit than a ghost to me!

Yup.

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www.hannysvoorwerp.com

Ah. That's where he went.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.