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Credit & Copyright: Massimo Penna
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.
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Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day