In the Spotlight

A streamer of gas outside the galaxy IC 2497 glows green in this recent Hubble Space Telescope image. The cloud is called Hanny's Voorwerp (Dutch for "Hanny's Object") after Hanny van Arkel, a Dutch teacher who discovered it while searching online galaxy images. The object is part of a twisting streamer of gas that wraps around the galaxy. This part of the streamer, however, was illuminated by energy from a quasar in the galaxy's core -- a brilliant disk of gas around a supermassive black hole. Since it beamed out the energy that illuminated Hanny's Voorwerp, however, the quasar has shut down. New stars are being born in the small orange clump at the top right of the Voorwerp. The entire structure spans almost 100,000 light-years. [NASA/ESA/W. Keel (Univ. Alabama)/Galaxy Zoo Team]