What a Lemmon!

Posted on by Brian Scott

Yus, me! And a Comet.

October 21st 2025 – it was a reasonably clear night, they’ve been mostly cloudy recently so, I set up a camera out on the patio, looking North West ish with my usual overnight time-lapse lens fitted, a Viltrox 13mm 1.4 so pretty wide and fixed or, Prime in Nikon terms and let it run.

I usually set it to take a shot every 15 seconds and it is open for 5 seconds, in this instance. That allows me to capture shooting stars, satellites etc. and see a decent bit of movement.

It got cold and damp pretty quickly so I brought the camera back in but set it up in the window as usual, a little bit later, by which time, the cloud had crept in even more.

It was only the next day as I clicked through the images that I spotted a smudge! in one of the shots taken outside; I zoomed in … a Comet!!!!

I had absolutely no inkling that there were comets around, not strictly true, I’ve been following Comet 3I/Atlas for a few days, who knows what it may be??? 😉

So, I looked up t’internet, see what was occurring in my sky. I came across My Sky Live and really like it, for some information but, in this case it told me I’d seen and photographed Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

It’s ONLY 94,478,289.8 kilometres away, practically in the neighbourhood!

21:27

This is a full width shot so you can see the white smudge or trail in the lower left corner.

I cropped the shot in and added it to the shot above.

And the cropped shot on its own.

kilometresYou can just see a satellite above it. I was quite please to accidentally capture any comet, I’d spent a few nights chasing Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) when it was visible but it’s now 880,068,717.8 kilometers away!

As I’ve told Deborah, I set up a camera outside the next clear night and zoomed closer but, I was pointing at the wrong bit of sky! Doh! Check your data first!!!!

So, tonight’s the night, as a few people have sung to us, so far the sky is pretty clear, I’ve checked where it will be, and checked again. I’ll probably check again later but, it’s FREEZING out there just now so ,………. Winter drawers on!!!

I’ll be in touch 🙂

our night sky

12 thoughts on “What a Lemmon!”

  1. That’s a great shot and look at Comet Lemmon! Egads, it was cloudy there wasn’t it.

    My second night I didn’t take into consideration that my marker The Big Dipper would move so when I found it not only headed west a bit it was also lower I had a feeling I’d be in trouble. Sure enough when I located the place in the sky the comet should have been I had that hill in the way.

    I pivoted the next night moved further north to spot I knew had a bigger view of the sky.

    We’ve got an Atmospheric River headed our way so we’re socked in with cloud cover and the wind is howling here so no night sky imaging for me for a bit. Best of luck to you! Get the shot!!

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      1. Oh, I hope you get them both tonight! I looked for Swan twice but I have the Sierra Nevada’s in my view North to South I’d have to get on the other side of them to have any chance of seeing Swan to the southwest. I’m rooting for you!!

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