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An astronomer just recently intended his telescope above Manciano, Italy, and captured something extraordinary: a brilliant comet apparently involved the corkscrewing path of a meteor, flashing in the exact same spot of sky like a cosmic barber store pole.
With countless miles separating the foreground meteor and the background comet, the chances of recording such a fortuitous shot were (reason the pun) astronomically low.
“In this photograph, the meteor’s afterglow appears to coil around the comet’s ion tail — a pure perspective miracle,” astronomer Gianluca Masicreator of The Virtual Telescope Project and the professional photographer who caught the spectacular shot, composed in a declaration “The former is an atmospheric effect induced by the meteor, while the comet itself was about 100 million kilometers [62 million miles] away.”The comet seen here is C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) — among 3 comets taking the planetary system by storm today, in addition to Comet R2 (SWAN) and the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLASComet Lemmon, which reached its closest indicate Earth on Oct. 21, is the brightest of the lot and has actually stayed noticeable enough to be translucented easy telescopes and stargazing field glasses for the following a number of days.
Masi found the comet on the night of Oct. 24. Its long, blue tail– the item of ionized gas that’s been vaporized off of the comet’s surface area and blown away by the solar wind– was plainly noticeable. For numerous minutes throughout Masi’s observations, another streamer-like structure ended up being noticeable near the comet: the wispy residues of an ion path left by a meteor dropping through Earth’s environment.
Seen here as a golden line spiraling around the comet; the meteor path progressed continuously throughout Masi’s observations, briefly looking like a part of the comet itself. In truth, the path is an outcome of chain reactions in the environment set off by the meteor’s ultrafast passage.
“The phenomenon is associated with the ionization of molecular oxygen in the atmosphere caused by the meteor event, followed by its recombination, which produces the emission of light at that wavelength,” Masi stated.
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While meteors generally move at more than 100,000 miles per hour (160,000 km/h), their routes can stick around in the sky for numerous minutes, according to NASAThroughout this time, winds blowing at various elevations can shape those routes into meandering banner shapes like the one seen here. Masi likewise published a time-lapse video of the meteor occasion on YouTube demonstrating how the radiant path whipped through the sky in front of the comet for numerous minutes.
Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon and red meteor afterglow – YouTube
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The phenomenon of spiral meteor tracks has actually not been thoroughly studied, however they are thought about reasonably uncommon. A series of documents released in the 1980s and 1990s approximated that just 0.5% of observed meteors leave a nonlinear path. This number is far from particular and might have been altered by suboptimal video camera settings utilized to tape-record meteor tracks at the time.
The yearly Orionid meteor shower — an occasion set off by the particles of Halley’s comet– peaked on Oct. 20-21, the very same night Comet Lemmon was at its brightest. The shower is subsiding, it will last up until Nov. 7, implying more “shooting stars” like the one Masi captured are possible during the night. Keep your eyes on the skies, and perhaps you’ll identify a “miracle” of your own.
Brandon is the space/physics editor at Live Science. His writing has actually appeared in The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation site and other outlets. He holds a bachelor’s degree in imaginative composing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. He takes pleasure in composing most about area, geoscience and the secrets of deep space.
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