Chandra Release - February 18, 2026

Visual Description: Astrosphere, HD 61005

This release contains three main images, each offering a different take on the astrosphere surrounding a young star called HD 61005. An astrosphere is a wind-blown bubble full of gas and dust particles that encases a star as it pushes through interstellar space. 

In this release, an optical image from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile shows HD 61005 in the context of its star field. Here, the star in question appears as a glowing, gleaming white dot surrounded by other glowing dots of similar and smaller sizes. The image is utterly packed with specks of light in shades of blue, white, gold, green, and red. At this distance, in an optical observation, the star's astrosphere is not discernible.

The second image is a composite, which presents a close-up of HD 61005 using infrared data from Hubble, and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Here, the spherical star has a brilliant core bursting with white X-ray light. Ringing the white core is a neon purple glow; the astrosphere surrounding the star. A distinguishing feature of HD 61005 is a white, wedge-shaped tail with neon blue tips, which trails the fast-moving star. This tail is dusty material left behind after the star's formation.  The wedge, or wing shape of the tail has earned the star the nickname 'Moth' by astronomers spying it through infrared telescopes.

The third image in this release is an artist's illustration of an astrosphere in action. Here, a large, pale purple ball soars from our right toward our left, into a misty brown cloud. The purple ball appears to be protected by a blue force field, which pushes the brown cloud aside as the ball dives in. In this illustration, the purple ball represents the astrosphere surrounding a star and the brown cloud is interstellar gas. The blue force field is a bow shock, a curved free-floating shock wave, similar to the sonic boom that travels in front of a supersonic plane. The bow shock is caused by the motion of the star and its astrosphere hurtling through space. This illustration features a series of faint lines representing wind patterns from HD 61005, but does not show the tail of debris found behind and beside HD 61005.