Here at Future-ish, we love astronomy and we love cocktails. So to prep our fans (and ourselves) for those stellar weekend cocktail conversations, we are pleased to offer our Cocktail Astronomy post each Friday.
This week we join many of our fellow Trekkies in celebrating Star Trek Day and NASA's 2016 Spitzer Space Telescope images of nebulae that resemble two of the series' most famous star ships, Captain Kirk's USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and Captain Picard's Enterprise-D NCC-1701-D.
The nebulae (catalog numbers IRAS 19340+2016 and IRAS19343+2026) are located on the Milky Way's outer disk and are visible using Spitzer's infared technology that allows it to view objects deeper in space often obscured by dust.
Cocktail pairing: since Aldebaran whiskey made cameos in several Star Trek series, we suggest pouring a shot of your favorite whiskey from right here on Earth. And don't forget to raise that glass to 50 years of Star Trek ;-)