The Moth: An Unusual Circumstellar Debris Structure Associated with HD 61005

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Scientific paper

We present HST/NICMOS coronagraphic images of the circumstellar structure associated with the nearby, ~80 Myr old, sun-like G-dwarf star HD 61005, discovered by the FEPS Spitzer Legacy Science Program to exhibit infrared excess emission indicative of circumstellar dust. The HST/NICMOS observations reveal dust-scattered starlight extending to distances ~240 AU from the occulted star. The structure is strongly asymmetric about its major axis, but is mirror-symmetric about its minor axis; morphologically, the object resembles a wing-spread moth with the star as the head. Scattered, near infrared light is traced to within 10 AU of the star (limited by the coronagraphic obscuration) with no evidence of a turnover in radial surface brightness profiles. The fraction of 1.1 micron starlight scattered by the structure relative to the stellar photosphere is larger than any debris disk previously observed. The swept shape of the debris disk may be caused by the motion of the HD 61005 system through its local interstellar medium.

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