Cocktail Astronomy | The Football-shaped Planet, WASP-103b

Artist rendering of WASP-103b. Image credit: ESA

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.

It's Superbowl week so we are super exited to share this particular Cocktail Astronomy find...a football shaped planet.

That's right, first observed in 2014 in the constellation Hercules by an international team of scientists, the gas giant WASP-103b is over 1,000 light years away and because of it's proximity to it's sun, the tidal gravitational forces have resulted in a football shaped planet. Researchers used images form ESA's Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS) telescope along with previous observations of WASP-103b from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes.

The new evidence of tidal deformations was shared in the January 2022 issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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Cocktail Pairing: we have two thoughts for pairings to go with this nod to the Superbowl...beer and bourbon. But we're making the play on a common theme too...go local. What would the Superbowl be without beer? There are lots of big brands out there but opt for a local microbrew if you can. And, it's always good to have a good whiskey or bourbon on hand for great plays and touchdowns. Same call, go local. There are many local distilleries popping up everywhere around the country so take this opportunity to explore your local brands. Cheers!

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Cocktail Astronomy | Zombie Nebula Discovered

Image credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)

Image credit: NASA, JPL, and K. Su
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.

OK, we admit it, we love zombies too. So with Halloween just around the corner, we wanted to bring a bit of our zombie crush into Cocktail Astronomy. Check out the nebula above...talk about a zombie transformation!? Discovered by Karl Ludwig prior to 1824, NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula (often referred to as the 'Eye of God)', is actually one of the most well known nebulas in astronomy and pop culture. It is a large planetary nebula located in the Aquarius constellation located about 650 light-years from Earth.

The first image from 2003 - pre-zombie - is a visible light image produced by combining data from the Hubble Telescope and NSF's .9 meter telescope at Kitt Peak. The second image - post-zombie - is an infrared image of NGC 7293 taken by the Spitzer telescope in 2007. Our newly named 'Zombie Nebula' It is a great example of how different telescopes with different spectral analysis reveal unique information about the objects being observed.

So have the bartender whip up one of those spooky Halloween cocktails (we suggest a 'brain tumor' or 'pina ghoulada') and let your friends know that zombies have invaded the cosmos. We're just happy that all the zombie dancers around the globe participating in the annual Thrill the World event that celebrates Michael Jackson's Thriller can look up into the sky and know that the big zombie eye in the sky is staring (hungrily) right back at them.

Cocktail Astronomy | Stellar Snow Angel

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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.

For this week's Cocktail Astronomy, we're all about the Holidays. With Justin Bieber holiday songs playing in the background, we'll be raising a our eggnog, hot spiced wine, and other favorite holiday cocktails to Sharpless 2-106, or S106 for short, that just so happens to look like a cosmic snow angel. Located in the constellation Cygnus, S106 is over 2,000 light years from Earth and is the 106th object to be catalogued by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in the 1950. The image above was taken by Hubble in February 2011 and shows the birth of a massive star, IRS 4 (Infrared Source 4) to be exact. Hot gasses create the wings of the angel and a ring of and gas orbiting the star serve as a belt.

A Day at the Galaxy Zoo

Have some free time on Sunday afternoon? Why not help astronomy researchers explore the universe? Galaxy Zoo is an online astronomy project that makes the very most out of citizen science. After a few tutorials, you can start helping an international team of scientists by classifying a few of the hundreds of thousands of galaxies discovered in Hubble Space Telescope surveys.