Now it can be told. My wife, who you may recall is an astrophysicist at NASA, and her various teams of other astrophysicists just won the AAS Conference championship in Seattle.
The secret: custom silly bands in the shapes of their respective missions and/or nerdtastic symbols.
On the top row: the Hubble Space Telescope, obviously; and LISA [Laser Interferometer Space Antenna]
Second row: IXO, the International X-Ray Observatory; and, of course, W, which represents dark energy in the cosmological Equation of state.
Go ahead, look it up if you have to.
Hurry home, baby, the kids are tired of going out for sushi every day!
American Astronomical Society 217th Meeting, Seattle, WA [aas.org]
"Sahwheat." Congrats to the astrophysicist and her spouse for holding it all together