That's certainly not all that can be said about it. You neglected to include the obviously essential fact that it's called "Hanny's Voorwerp" (voorwerp!) and it was discovered by a non-astronomer going through galaxy photos. Score one for citizen science!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badast…

... but seriously, Charles, how could you ignore the word "voorwerp"?

It's also a cloud of oxygen the size of the Milky Way, backlit by the light of a long-dead quasar that was sucked down the maw of a black hole at the heart of an alien galaxy.

The eerie green backlight should fade and the object should become invisible in about 200,000 years, just like the quasar that lit it, that we can no longer see...

@1, he didn't ignore it -- "Voowerp" is Dutch for "Thing" (or "Object")

It's probably the alien invasion fleet.

Hanny Van Arkel named this voorwerp as her own. But Charles, I'm puzzled by the rest of what "can be said." What does it mean to say that "it's green?" Or to say that "it's there?"

I read the story with the enlarged image. It covered much of the text. The text was eclipsed. That's what my comment is really saying.

Galactus.

Reminds me of the intro to the re-make of Little Shop of Horrors. That green blob is a region of space thats home to carnivorous plants!!

yeah, the green lantern

Am I the only one who remembers Oobleck?

These images are artificially colored, as most long-range telescope images are. I think it's pretty safe to say that it's not actually green.

The possibility that this is the result of a galaxy collision is pretty exciting though. It's interesting to think that after a few billion years and a collision with Andromeda, the remains of our planet may just be floating among a blob like this.

Kermit was spaced? It's not easy being green...

oobleck? no rob you are not the only one who remembers it! of course not! kids still make it. mine came home from school with some, and they even called it oobleck.

Green matter instead of dark matter?