I mentioned that I'm in the midst of a summer research program at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory - there are eight other summer students here with me, and one of them turned 21 three weeks ago. I mentioned that we made an epic cake for him, but didn't have pictures to show until now. Requisite background information: his research project is to model C-O regions in the Whirlpool Galaxy, using data from the Very Large Array (of radio telescopes) in New Mexico.

This is what the Whirlpool Galaxy looks like:

This is what his birthday cake looked like:

This is what the Very Large Array looks like:

This is what his Very Small Array (of red velvet cupcakes) looked like:

The cupcakes took observations of the cake.

We're nerdy and we know it.