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Comet Lemmon’s nucleus and tail in view against the distant star field behind it. | Credit: Brennan Gilmore
Astrophotographer Brennan Gilmore has captured spectacular images of the solar wind removing much of the tail of C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) as the icy wanderer continues to brighten before approaching Earth on October 21.
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Comet Lemmon has brightened dramatically since its discovery on January 3, raising hopes that it could become a spectacular naked-eye comet in October, as it makes its closest approach to the Sun in its 1,350-year orbit – a point known as perihelion – on November 8.
Gilmore’s image gives us a spectacular view of Comet Lemmon’s glowing green coma as it passed close to the bright star TW Leonis Minoris in the constellation Leo Minor on October 4. A long, luminous tail extends from the comet’s nucleus as material is ejected from the nucleus. comet reflects the light of the nearby sun.
A comet’s tail is constantly blown by the steady stream of charged particles coming together from the sun.solar windSo it will always point away the sunrather than simply following a comet’s direction of travel, like the exhaust trail of an airplane.
Gilmore has released a stunning 60-minute timelapse of Comet Lemmon as a colossal section of its tail was buffeted and swept away by the solar wind on October 2, in a spectacular disconnection event. The images were captured using a Takahashi Epsilon 130D Newtonian telescope in combination with a ZWO astronomy camera from Cismont, Virginia.
Comet Lemmon continues to brighten, according to some observations of the Comet Observation Database (COBS) run by the Crni Vrh Observatory in Slovenia, with a brightness of +5.1, which would make it visible to the naked eye as an extremely faint object from a dark sky location.
Make sure you check out our finder’s guide if you want to see Comet Lemmon as it continues to brighten in October, and read our tips about how to photograph a comet if you want to create a permanent memory of the wandering body before it disappears from our skies,
Editor’s note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
