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October 17, 2025<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
How to Catch a Rare Comet and a Meteor Shower<\/p>\n
A comet visible to the naked eye will make its closest approach to Earth on October 21<\/p>\n
By Dan Falk edited by Clara Moskowitz<\/span><\/p>\n Astrophotographer Brennan Gilmore captured this photograph of Comet Lemmon on October 4, 2025, from central Virginia.<\/p>\n A comet discovered earlier this year, now just bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, is poised to be among the top celestial events of 2025. Known as C\/2025 A6 (Lemmon), this celestial wanderer is currently in the western sky after sunset, not far from the Big Dipper, and is well placed for viewing as the sky gets dark.<\/p>\n Astronomers discovered the comet in January as part of the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona and calculated that it\u2019s on a 1,350-year orbit around the sun\u2014so if you miss it this time around, you\u2019re out of luck.<\/p>\n Comet Lemmon will be closest to Earth on October 21, when it passes within 55 million miles (89 million kilometers) of our planet. Conveniently, this is also the date of the new moon, meaning the sky will lack moonlight, making it easier to spy fainter objects. By coincidence, the Orionid meteor shower also peaks on the night of October 21, so lucky skywatchers may glimpse a few shooting stars as they gaze at the comet.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n The comet is expected to be at its brightest from around that date through early November. It will be closest to the sun (a point known as perihelion) on November 8.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the city, you probably won\u2019t see it with the naked eye, but with binoculars you should be able to pick it up,\u201d says Bob King, a contributing editor at Sky & Telescope. \u201cFrom the country, when the moon\u2019s not in the sky, you\u2019ll be able to see it [with the] naked eye. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a little fuzzy spot, and the binocular view should be really lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n Amanda Monta\u00f1ez; Source: Stellarium with additions by Bob King (reference)<\/p>\n Even those who aren\u2019t intimately familiar with the constellations should be able to use the Big Dipper, as well as the bright star Arcturus\u2014the brightest star in the western sky at this time of year\u2014to find the comet. The wanderer is currently below the \u201chandle\u201d of the Dipper, and in late October it will be above Arcturus, to the left of the Dipper. Because the comet will be fairly low in the sky, the best time to see it will be soon after dusk, with the sweet spot coming around one hour after sunset. Binoculars may be necessary to view the comet\u2019s wispy tail, which is a result of high-speed particles from the sun pushing gas and dust away from the comet\u2019s nucleus.<\/p>\n Although observing from a rural spot is ideal, people who can\u2019t escape the city shouldn\u2019t be put off, says Debra Ceravolo, an astrophotographer who images the sky from southern British Columbia. \u201cAt least find a dark corner of the backyard, someplace shielded from the streetlights,\u201d she says. \u201cBinoculars will definitely help.\u201d<\/p>\n Skywatchers should also be aware that what they see with their eyes will never quite measure up to the stunning photographs captured by seasoned astrophotographers, who typically use a mechanism called a clock drive to compensate for Earth\u2019s rotation and processing techniques such as image stacking to make celestial objects appear brighter. Even so, people shooting with nothing more than their smartphone may still get good results, especially if they\u2019re able to mount their phone on a tripod, King says. \u201cToday\u2019s smartphone cameras can do long exposures, say, from three to 10 seconds. That should be enough to pick it up.\u201d<\/p>\n Comets are famously unpredictable, and although Comet Lemmon is due to get brighter through the second half of October, it almost certainly won\u2019t rival comets such as Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake, which lit up the sky in the 1990s. Even so, it is very much worth a look, Ceravolo says. \u201cI love comets,\u201d she says. \u201cSo whenever there\u2019s a good one, I\u2019m there.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" October 17, 2025 3 min read How to Catch a Rare Comet and a Meteor Shower A comet visible to the naked eye will make its closest approach to Earth on October 21 By Dan Falk edited by Clara Moskowitz Astrophotographer Brennan Gilmore captured this photograph of Comet Lemmon on October 4, 2025, from central<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[2902,17037,3598,17038,6683,1581],"class_list":{"0":"post-28710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-comet","9":"tag-lemmon","10":"tag-meteor","11":"tag-orionids","12":"tag-peak","13":"tag-shower"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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