Physicists usually get the props/scorn for crazy names, but astro-ph today reminded me that astronomers can frequently pull out names that shame even the kookiest bits of physics nomenclature.

So today I present to you “Gomez’s Hamburger”.

Gomez’s Hamburger is (as you may have guessed), not actually a gigantic threat to vegetarianism across the Galaxy, but instead is a “protoplanetary disk” seen edge-on. Stars usually form in molecular clouds from dense cores of gas and dust. Some of the higher angular momentum gas and dust, however, winds up not on the star itself, but in a rotating disk around the star. Some fraction of the material in the disk eventually winds up building a planetary system.
The picture at left shows some of the these disks seen in silhouette against the glow of the Orion nebula. Gomez’s Hamburger is what you get when one of these disks is seen perfectly edge-on. The dust in the disk blocks the light from the newly formed star in its center, making the burger, while light reflected from the upper layers of the disk is less shielded, and manifests as the bun.