Hanny van Arkel

See photographs taken by John Hackett of the event HERE. In late 2007, a young schoolteacher had recently joined Galaxy Zoo, an online project for classifying galaxies. Soon after, she found a mysterious 'blob' near one of the galaxies she was classifying. None of the astronomers knew what it was, and she very quickly shot to fame. Hanny van Arkel, from the Netherlands, has spent the last year travelling around the world telling people of her discovery, known as 'Hanny's Voorwerp', and how everyone can take part in real science. Astronomy Ireland's special June lecture was given by Hanny to an audience of very enthusiastic amateur astronomers. Hanny explained how she joined Galaxy Zoo and how it works (and how everyone in the audience could join, too). She gave guests a quick tutorial on how to classify galaxies on the website, which simply consists of answering some simple question: "Is it a spiral? Is it edge-on?", etc. It was when she was classifying a spiral galaxy, Hanny explained, that she stumbled upon a strange blue object just beside the galaxy. Further investigations revealed that the object (or 'voorwerp' as it's known in Dutch) was a galaxy-sized cloud of very hot gas, containing very few stars. Hanny gave an overview on why it is visible: light and energy from the galaxy travelled through space to illuminate the cloud. Next, the cloud started to give out its own light, due to the energisation from the galaxy. Finally, the light arrived at Earth, resulting in what we can see today. In short, the object is a "light echo". Following the lecture and lots of inquisitive questions, guests went over to The Lombard, where drinks and food were enjoyed by all. See the photos HERE.