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A young, sun-like star reveals its protective sheath, or ‘astrosphere’, for the first time in this Chandra image. | Credit: X-ray: NASA\/CXC\/Johns Hopkins Univ.\/C.M. Lisse et al.; Infrared: NASA\/ESA\/STIS; Optical: NSF\/NoirLab\/CTIO\/DECaPS2<\/p>\n
quick facts<\/p>\n
What it is: HD 61005, a sun-like star nicknamed the “Moth”<\/p>\n
Where it is: About 117 light-years away in the constellation Puppis<\/p>\n
When it was shared: Feb. 23, 2026<\/p>\n
The sun orbits the center of the Milky Way<\/a> wrapped in a protective bubble of its own making, dubbed the heliosphere. And for the first time, astronomers have spotted a similar protective bubble forming around an alien star.<\/p>\n Created by the solar wind \u2014 a stream of charged particles constantly pouring out from the sun<\/a> \u2014 the heliosphere acts as a magnetic shield against interstellar radiation. Where the heliosphere ends, interstellar space begins, making it the outermost boundary of the solar system<\/a>.<\/p>\n A star called HD 61005 has just been confirmed to have its own heliosphere, or “astrosphere.\u201d And since HD 61005 is much younger than the sun (about 100 million years compared to 4.6 billion years), the discovery also offers astronomers a rare glimpse into what our home star may have looked like in its infancy.<\/p>\n This groundbreaking image<\/a> uses X-ray data from NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple and white in the image) alongside infrared (blue and white) and optical (red, green and blue) observations from other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Combining the data has enabled astronomers to capture a striking portrait of a stellar wind bubble in action.<\/p>\n A zoomed-in view of the ‘Moth’ and its astrosphere | Credit: X-ray: NASA\/CXC\/John Hopkins Univ.\/C.M. Lisse et al.; Infrared: NASA\/ESA\/STIS; Image Processing: NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/N. Wolk<\/p>\n At the center of the image, there’s a brilliant white X-ray core. Surrounding it is a neon-purple glow marking the astrosphere itself.<\/p>\n One of HD 61005\u2019s most distinctive features is a wedge-shaped dust tail trailing behind it that looks like a pair of wings. This debris, left over from the star\u2019s formation, has been swept backward as the star speeds through space, and its unusual shape has earned HD 61005 the nickname the “Moth.\u201d<\/p>\n “There\u2019s a saying about a moth being drawn to a flame,” Brad Snios, a physicist formerly from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cIn the case of HD 61005, the \u2018Moth\u2019 can\u2019t easily escape from the flame because it was born around it.\u201d<\/p>\n Though similar in mass and temperature to the sun, HD 61005 is far younger and more active. Its stellar winds are estimated to be about three times faster and 25 times denser than those currently emitted by the sun. If it replaced the sun in the solar system, then our heliosphere would be up to 10 times wider, according to NASA.<\/p>\n Capturing the first alien astrosphere has been an ongoing mission since the 1990s. The breakthrough was made possible because HD 61005\u2019s powerful wind collides with an unusually dense region of interstellar material, generating X-rays detectable by Chandra.<\/p>\n It’s the first clue to what may have surrounded the early solar system billions of years ago \u2014 and perhaps how young planetary systems evolve in their cosmic neighborhoods.<\/p>\n An image of the egg nebula, with a glowing streak of pink gas in the middle surrounded by concentric circles of white like with four diagonal beams of light streaking from top left to bottom right all in front of a deep space starry background<\/p>\n The closest baby nebula to Earth was caught spitting up its stardust.<\/p>\n View Deal<\/a><\/p>\n An image of a spiral galaxy on a splotchy black and white background with a stream of black material emerging from the galaxy<\/p>\n First-light images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory reveal a 163,000-light-year stream of stars emanating from a nearby galaxy.<\/p>\n![\"Purple](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/e57d78d5b8d97368ae94257b05dba5ab.jpeg\"\/)
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