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APOD: 2025 October 27 – Two Tails of Comet Lemmon

APOD: 2025 October 27 – Two Tails of Comet Lemmon

30 de julho de 2026
há cerca de 1 hora
APOD: 2025 October 27 – Two Tails of Comet Lemmon

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.

A dark sky shows bright comet with its tails extending diagonally from the lower left. Two tails are visible for the comet -- a long blue tail and a shorter wider white tail. Oddly, a wiggly tan stream appears to be a third tail -- but is actually the dust from a dissipated meteor. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Two Tails of Comet Lemmon

Explanation: How many bright tails does Comet Lemmon have? Two. In the featured image it appears to have three, but why? The reason is that the zigzagging brown filament is a persistent meteor train that by luck appeared in front of the distant comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) . A meteor train is the hot gas and fine dust that remains in the Earth's atmosphere and disperses in the seconds after a bright meteor flashes by. The two bright tails are the blue ion tail stretching across the image, and the white dust tail nearer the green coma on the upper left. All real comet tails originate from the nucleus of the comet inside the coma. The image was captured a few days ago from Manciano , Italy . This week, from mid-northern locations, Comet Lemmon will remain faintly visible in the northwest sky after sunset.

Date October 27, 2025
Credit Image Credit: Massimo Penna
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

NASA

Agência Espacial Americana

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