Astronomy Picture of the Day

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.