Anyone?

August 19, 2010 2:10 AM

The Story of Hanny So Far

It all started when Hanny, a big fan of Queen guitarist Brian May, clicked a link on his website. Since then, the life of the clever but untrained 24 year old primary school teacher has been inextricably linked to a big blue (green?) 'astronomical object of unknown nature.'

Previously on GalaxyZoo

posted by Potomac Avenue (12 comments total)

That's lovely. Good for her!
posted by lucien_reeve at 2:34 AM on August 19, 2010

Such a cool story. These public participation astronomy projects are great, I can't think of another scientific field where amateurs play such an important role. Amateur astronomers discover all sorts of cosmological objects and mysteries. I love it.
posted by IvoShandor at 3:41 AM on August 19, 2010

Yay! That story made me happy, which I kind of needed this morning.

It is also full of great band/user names. If I already didn't have a name, I would be tempted by "Unidentified Bluey Stuff," "Hanny's Voorwerp," or "the size of 8,500,000,000 suns," although the last would be a pain to type.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:01 AM on August 19, 2010

Also, I like the call for more general-participation science. We do too little of that.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:02 AM on August 19, 2010

Incidentally, the author of the first link, Ann Finkbeiner, has just released a book on the survey Galaxy Zoo made use of.
posted by edd at 5:03 AM on August 19, 2010

How exciting! The possible explanation is really interesting.
posted by neushoorn at 5:11 AM on August 19, 2010

It's obvious we have located the home galaxy of Kirk's enemy the Gorn.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 6:40 AM on August 19, 2010

Is this something I'd have to pronounce 'Voorwerpje' to appreciate?

Just kidding. This is a great story, but I'd really like some help for an American English speaker in pronouncing that. VOOr-virp-ya?
posted by Some1 at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2010

That's nifty!
posted by ocherdraco at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2010

That is seriously so totally cool it begs other descriptions from inarticulate commentors such as myself.
posted by Xoebe at 11:06 AM on August 19, 2010

This was really cool, and I think I want to start helping out with that galaxy classification project.
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:32 AM on August 19, 2010

I thought these projects were great too until I was using SETI @ home, detected an alien signal, and these guys in suits came and confiscated my computer.
posted by iamck at 11:43 AM on August 19, 2010