• Story Highlights
• Using the Web, a Dutch schoolteacher has discovered a strange astronomical object
  
• The find illustrates how more amateur astronomers are contributing to science
  
• The Galaxy Zoo project encourages the public to join in astronomy research online
  
• Hubble Space Telescope has agreed to take a closer look at the object next year
  
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(CNN) -- Hanny van Arkel was poring over photos of galaxies on the Internet last August when she stumbled across a strange object in the night sky: a bright, gaseous mass with a gaping hole in its middle.

Van Arkel is a 25-year-old schoolteacher in Heerlen, The Netherlands, not an astrophysicist. But her startling find -- a mysterious and unique object some observers are calling a "cosmic ghost" -- has captivated astronomers and even caught the attention of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has agreed to take a closer look next year.