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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
The Astrosphere of HD 61005
Explanation: Do young stars blow bubbles? The larger view shows a stellar field observed with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and the inset highlights HD 61005 , a star like our Sun , only 120 light-years away. Much younger than the Sun, at just about 100 million years old, it blows a fast and dense stellar wind that pushes out the cooler dust and gas that surrounds it, forming a bubble called an astrosphere . The star-blown bubble was detected with the Chandra X-ray Observatory , and it has a diameter roughly 200 times the Earth-Sun distance . Our Sun has a bubble too, called the heliosphere , which protects the planets from cosmic radiation . Also shown in the inset is debris left behind from star formation, observed by Hubble . The debris appears as wings , giving the star its nickname: the Moth .
| Date | March 6, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Credit |
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / Johns Hopkins Univ. / C.M. Lisse et al.; Infrared: NASA / ESA / STIS ; Optical: NSF / NoirLab / CTIO / DECaPS2 Processing: NASA / CXC / SAO / N. Wolk - Text: Cecilia Chirenti ( NASA GSFC , UMCP , CRESST II ) |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |