This
Astrobin Debut Object is a Seyfert spiral edge-on galaxy located 400 million light years away in the constellation of Pegasus at a declination of +12 degrees. It is a magnitude 15 galaxy which spans 1 arc-minute in our apparent view. This corresponds to a Milky Way size diameter of 120,000 light years.
This object is one of 20 galaxies which have been associated with voorwerp objects. Voorwerps are the only DSOs which have a greenish glow. Voorwerps have been described as the ghosts of quasars. My voorwerp galaxy collection is
here.
The Hubble site describes this phenomenon as follows:
“A quasar beam has caused once-invisible filaments in deep space to glow through a process called photoionisation. Oxygen, helium, nitrogen, sulphur and neon in the filaments absorb light from the quasar and slowly re-emit it over many thousands of years. Their unmistakable emerald hue is caused by ionised oxygen, which glows green. These ghostly structures are so far from the galaxy’s heart that it would have taken light from the quasar tens of thousands of years to reach them and light them up. So, although the quasars themselves have turned off, the green clouds will continue to glow for much longer before they too fade.
Not only are the green filaments far from the centers of their host galaxies, they are also immense in size, spanning tens of thousands of light-years. They are thought to be long tails of gas formed during a past merger. The first object of this type was found in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel in the online Galaxy Zoo project (in galaxy IC 2497). This bizarre feature was dubbed Hanny’s Voorwerp (Dutch for Hanny’s object).”
The fantastic green tails of gas seen in the Hubble image are difficult to capture using amateur equipment.
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