It is a good rule of thumb to try to see meteors with the naked eye. They move too quickly and they are too ephemeral to catch them with a telescope. Still, all good rules have exceptions, and this latest exception created a stunning mirage around Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), as a red helix seems to wrap around the comet and its long tail.
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The reason for the spiral it was the presence of a meteor. Astronomer and creator of the Virtual Telescope Project Gianluca Masi was taking pictures of Comet Lemmon on October 24 when a meteor flew through the western sky, where the comet is currently visible at the moment. Meteors are small fragments of ice or rocks, often from comets, that fly into the atmosphere, burning brightly for a handful of seconds. As the meteor burns, it excites the gases of the atmosphere, which continue to shine in the immediate aftermath.
“The phenomenon is associated with the ionization of molecular oxygen in the atmosphere caused by the meteor event, followed by its recombination, which produces the emission of light at that wavelength. In this photograph, the meteor’s afterglow appears to coil around the comet’s ion tail – a pure perspective miracle, since the former is an atmospheric effect induced by the meteor, while the comet itself was about 100 million kilometers [62 million miles] away,” Masi wrote in a blog post accompanying the image.
Comet Lemmon was closest to Earth last week, and it is now getting closer to the Sun. It is visible in the western sky after sunset, visible to the naked eye in dark sky areas, or with a telescope or binoculars. It is likely to be the brightest comet this year.
“I had never documented anything quite like it before – and to have it happen right in front of such a remarkable comet as C/2025 A6 Lemmon makes it even more extraordinary,” Masi continued.
“I’m currently working on creating a time-lapse, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this wonder.”
As you can imagine, we can’t wait to see it too!
Source Link: C/2025 A6 (Lemmon): Phenomenal Fleeting Photobomb Creates Spiral Over Brightest Comet