The international year of astronomy is still an exciting one. The first volunteer-inspired Galaxy Zoo paper has been submitted, the Suzaku observations of IC 2497 (the galaxy next to ‘my’ Voorwerp) have been completed and tonight the ‘repair mission’ to the Hubble Space Telescope started…
So what’s this with this paper? It’s the one about peas. Besides ‘Hanny’s Voorwerp’, I also posted a picture of a ‘little’ green and round thingy on the Galaxy Zoo forum, back in the beginning. I jokingly called it a pea and with the help of other members, I soon was able to make a nice soup. There are more of them, in other words. But what they really are? Nobody seemed to know. Carie investigated them and wrote on the Galaxy Zoo blog that the paper has been submitted. It goes by the title: “A new class of compact extremely star forming galaxies?” So, give peas a chance indeed.
Besides the pictures we already have from Hanny’s Voorwerp, the Suzaku telescope was on our list to do some X-ray observations. They took place last month, but it takes a while before the data has been processed, I’ve been told. Also on our list is the XMM-Newton telescope by the way (which is doing X-ray as well, but at different wavelengths) and of course the famous Hubble Space Telescope.
Which brings me to the last update. Before we can have a fabulous poster-sized picture of Hanny’s Voorwerp, the Hubble needed its updates and therefore there was a repair mission planned (as announced in my calendar). The liftoff was tonight, so I’m typing this with crossed fingers. Let’s hope we’ll hear more positive updates in the news soon, for which I can recommend their website: www.hubblesite.org. Oh and here are two screenshots as well…
3 Comments
On its way doing what it’s supposed to do! Success and good luck for the space shuttle on this mission!
I’ll second that, I so love this stuff, reminds me of how excited I was as a young boy when the moon missions were all happening 8)
Yep, good luck to NASA. Thanks for the update, Hanny, I’m looking forward to all the new images we’ll get to see, including the Voorwerp