Portrayed in movies and on television most often as gateways to another dimension or cosmic vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in sight, the misconceptions surrounding black holes are many and varied.

While sorting through hundreds of galaxy images as part of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project two years ago, Dutch schoolteacher and volunteer astronomer Hanny van Arkel stumbled upon a strange-looking object that baffled professional astronomers.

A team of Yale University astronomers has discovered that galaxies stop forming stars long before their central supermassive black holes reach their most powerful stage, meaning the black holes can’t be responsible for shutting down star formation.

A Dutch schoolteacher taking part in an online research project has discovered a gaseous object that astronomers say is of unknown origin.

Even though it was discovered by a Dutch primary school teacher it’s not a fairytale, in fact, it’s a "cosmic ghost" that could possibly represent a new class of astronomical objects.