Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers observed HD 61005, a star about 120 light-years from Earth with roughly the same mass and temperature as the Sun, News.Az reports, citing Space.com.
The team detected a massive wind-blown bubble — known as an astrosphere — surrounding the star.
An astrosphere forms when a star’s powerful stellar wind collides with surrounding interstellar gas and dust, carving out a protective cavity similar to the Sun’s heliosphere, which shields our solar system from galactic cosmic rays.
This discovery marks the first X-ray evidence of an astrosphere around a sun-like star beyond our solar system. Chandra’s sensitive instruments detected faint, extended X-ray emission around HD 61005, revealing the glowing outline of its bubble. The X-rays are generated where the star’s high-speed, dense wind slams into cooler interstellar material, heating it and producing visible radiation in the X-ray spectrum.
HD 61005 is estimated to be about 100 million years old — much younger than our 4.6-billion-year-old Sun. Its stellar wind is significantly stronger, blowing about three times faster and roughly 25 times denser than the solar wind today. In addition, the surrounding interstellar environment appears about 1,000 times denser than the region currently surrounding our Sun, intensifying the interaction and boosting the X-ray signal.
Lead author Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins University said the findings provide insight into how the Sun’s own astrosphere may have evolved over billions of years as it traveled through the galaxy.
Astronomers have nicknamed HD 61005 the “Moth” due to its distinctive wing-shaped debris disk observed in infrared light — leftover material from the star’s formation that appears sculpted by its movement through space.
The research offers a rare glimpse into conditions that may have shaped the early solar system, when the young Sun’s wind was stronger and its interactions with surrounding gas and dust were more dramatic. Scientists say the findings also help explain how stellar winds influence planetary environments and potentially affect the habitability of worlds orbiting other stars.
Co-author Scott Wolk of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian noted that understanding stellar winds is critical, as solar activity continues to influence satellites and future human exploration missions beyond Earth.
