Happy Birthday Fermi

The cake features a (hand drawn) Fermi gamma-ray skymap, showing the bright bandproduced by diffuse emission from the disk of our Galaxy, the Fermibubbles (in black) – huge lobes of gamma-rays extending above and below theGalactic disk, and many point sources of gamma-rays (active galaxies,pulsars and much more).

The Fermi observatory, sculpted here from fondant, shows the Large AreaTelescope (grey box) and a 3-d representation of the NaI (black/yellow)and BGO (orange) detectors of the gamma-ray burst monitor. Combinedthese instruments provide observations over an extraordinarily largeswath of the electromagnetic spectrum (from 8keV to over 300 GeV).

A pen is included to show the scale – this was a monstrous cake! The 70 or soof us at the launch anniversary celebration only got through half thecake, despite being a delicious combination of chocolate and vanilla. This is fortunate for our waistlines given the followingingredient list:
7 lbs flour
9 lbs sugar
30 eggs
6 lbs butter
3 lbs marshmallow
1 lb corn starch
8 cups of buttermilk

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