Introduction Have you ever heard of a burger in space? It may sound like something from a science fiction movie, but it’s not. There’s a real astronomical object nicknamed Gomez’s Hamburger. This isn’t something you can eat, though! It’s a young star in the cosmos, surrounded by a protoplanetary disk, which kind of makes it look like a giant space burger!
What Is Gomez’s Hamburger? Gomez’s Hamburger, also known as IRAS 18059-3211, was first spotted in 1985 by Arturo Gómez, a technical staff member at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory near Vicuña, Chile. He noticed something intriguing on the sky photographs he was studying. The object had a dark band running through the middle, making it resemble a hamburger!
This cosmic hamburger isn’t a planetary nebula as initially thought. Instead, it’s a young star enveloped by a protoplanetary disk. This disk is just a fancy term for a circular region filled with dust and gas, which over time, can form planets. The “buns” of this hamburger are actually light reflecting off the dust in the protoplanetary disk. The “burger patty” is the dark band in the middle, a disk of dust seen nearly from the edge, which obscures the star itself.
How Big Is Gomez’s Hamburger? The exact size of Gomez’s Hamburger is not easy to state because it’s light-years away from us. But let’s try to understand the size in a way that’s easier for us to grasp.
- The distance between us and Gomez’s Hamburger is about 900 light-years. This means that the light we see from it today actually left the star 900 years ago! - A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, which is about 9.461 trillion kilometers. So, Gomez’s Hamburger is really, really far away from us. - While we can’t say for sure how big Gomez’s Hamburger is, we know that the star at the center has a surface temperature of about 10,000 K, which is nearly twice as hot as our own Sun.
Size Comparison To better understand the size of Gomez’s Hamburger, let’s compare it with things we know:
- It’s much bigger than Earth. If Earth were the size of a pea, Gomez’s Hamburger would be a giant beach ball! - It’s smaller than our Sun. If our Sun was the size of a basketball, Gomez’s Hamburger might be the size of a tennis ball.
Conclusion Gomez’s Hamburger is a fascinating object in our universe. It’s not only interesting because of its burger-like appearance but also because it’s a young star with a protoplanetary disk. This means it might be in the process of forming new planets, making it a window into the early stages of planetary system formation. Isn’t that amazing? Even though it’s far away and we can’t see it with our naked eyes, we can still learn so much about it and the universe we live in.
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