Science Alert's Make Your Day Better With These 8 Cool Space Things That Have Totally Ridiculous Names says:
Whoever named Gomez's Hamburger sure must have been hungry, because it doesn't really look much like a hamburger.
The object was discovered in 1985 in images taken by Arturo Gomez of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and it was initially identified as a planetary nebula around a very old, dying star. But if it was a planetary nebula, it was an odd one, with a dark band stretching across the glowing centre.
It wasn't until 2008 that astronomers suggested Gomez's Hamburger might actually be the opposite; not an old star 6,500 light-years away, but a very young one, just 900 light-years away, around four times the mass of the Sun. So young, in fact, that it is still surrounded by a protoplanetary disc of dust and gas.
In this model, the bright regions - the burger's buns - are starlight reflecting off dust around it. The burger's filling is that protoplanetary disc, seen edge-on.
Question: Who named Gomez's HamburgerGomez's Hamburger (IRAS 18059-3211) as "Gomez's Hamburger"?
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA