BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Cosmic Father's Day * Greetings to Dads

What sort of tie would you give a cosmic father? What would you feed him? Where might he find challenging mountaineering, make an astounding golf shot or get up an interstellar soccer game? How can you send a special man a genuinely galactic greeting? Here's how.

Cosmic Father's Day

Here is my galaxified Father's Day message. All of the "letters" are galaxies from the Sloane Digital Sky Survey.

You can try the webpage to galaxify your own message, but I just checked it out and keep getting a message saying "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again." I don't know if this is temporary or whether the site is actually defunct.

Is the Father's Day tie a joke or is it still a thing?

Here is a bow-tie nebula, for some reason known as the Boomerang Nebula.

Mona, both are awesome - fortunately I do not see the Fathers' Day ties anymore.....

Info for space enthusiasts: Alan Shepard was the first American in space, and he was the commander of Apollo 14.

Info for golf enthusiasts: While Shepard was on the Moon, he hit two golf balls. Not your usual round of golf, but then doing sports in a space suit isn't all that easy. Getting the ball into a hole - unless it was a largish crater - would be near impossible. But you could hit it a long way in the Moon's low gravity and no air resistance.

Astrophysicist Ethan Segel has calculated that you could hit one nearly two and a half miles.

Cosmic breakfast menu.

Fried Egg Nebula (IRAS 17163-3907). A yellow hypergiant surrounded by a nebula resembles an egg white around a yolky center.

Credit: ESO/E. Lagadec

There isn't a Bacon Nebula, though Google thought the California Nebula (NGC 1499) resembled a slice of bacon.

The Pancake Galaxy (ESO 373-B) even seems to be complete with maple syrup. (It's actually a spiral galaxy seen edge-on.)

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA