Gomez's Hamburger, also known as IRAS 18059-3211 or Gomez's Whopper is an astronomical object believed to be a young A-type star surrounded by a

protoplanetary disk A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may not be considered an accretion disk; while the two are sim ...

. It was initially identified as a

planetary nebula A planetary nebula is a type of emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives. The term "planetary nebula" is a misnomer because they are unrelated to planets. The ...

, and its distance was estimated to be approximately 6500

light-years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astro ...

away from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. However, recent results suggest that this object is a young star surrounded by a

, at a distance of about 900 light-years away. It was discovered in 1985 on sky photographs obtained by Arturo Gómez, support technical staff at the

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is an Astronomy, astronomical observatory located on the summit of Mt. Cerro Tololo in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile, with additional facilities located on Mt. Cerro Pachón about to th ...

near

Vicuña The vicuña (''Lama vicugna'') or vicuna (both , very rarely spelled ''vicugna'', Vicugna, its former genus name) is one of the two wild South American camelids, which live in the high alpine tundra, alpine areas of the Andes; the other cameli ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. The photos suggested that there was a dark band across the object, but its exact structure was difficult to determine because of the atmospheric turbulence that hampers all images taken from the ground. The star itself has a surface temperature of approximately 10,000 K. The "buns" are light reflecting off dust. A disk of dust seen nearly exactly edge-on obscures the star and produces the dark band in the middle, the "burger". It has a dim visual magnitude of 14.4.

Possible protoplanet

An emission at the southern part of the disk seen in

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a poisonous, flammable gas that is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the si ...

imaging, as well as in mid-infrared imaging, was interpreted as a

protoplanet A protoplanet is a large planetary embryo that originated within a protoplanetary disk and has undergone internal melting to produce a differentiated interior. Protoplanets are thought to form out of kilometer-sized planetesimals that gravitatio ...

candidate, termed GoHam b. This candidate would have a mass of 0.8-11.4 . Protoplanetary disk can however form disk fragments that are gravitationally bound and can mimic protoplanets. In the case of GoHam b it is not clear if it is a protoplanet or just a disk fragment.

Gallery

File:GoHam JWST NIRCam.jpg, JWST NIRCam image of GoHam File:GoHam JWST MIRI.jpg, JWST MIRI image of GoHam File:GoHam decaps dr2.jpg, Gomez's Hamburger from the ground with DESI legacy surveys

References

{{Sagittarius (constellation) Pre-stellar nebulae Circumstellar disks IRAS catalogue objects Sagittarius (constellation)