hamburger from space

When was the last time a Hubble Space Telescope image made you hungry? Located some 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, the celestial object called Gomez’s Hamburger (in honor of its discoverer, Arturo Gomez) is a sunlike star nearing the end of its life. The “patty” is actually a thick disc of dust surrounding and hiding a central star, and starlight reflecting off the ejected dust forms the “bun.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 1/28/2003.