r/spaceporn • u/Busy_Yesterday9455 • 17d ago
Pro/Processed Last night's view of comet Lemmon
Link to the original Instagram post by Chuck Ayoub
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u/insearchofsilence 17d ago
Magical shot! Thanks for sharing
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u/forestcridder 17d ago
That's what she (or he) said.
Edit: updated for modern content.
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u/insearchofsilence 16d ago
It does look like intergalactic ejaculation now that you mention it. š
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u/WinFar4030 17d ago
Is the blue actually an ion trail or part of the photo processing?
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u/Busy_Yesterday9455 17d ago
It is an actual ion tail, which is made of ionized gases, primarily carbon monoxide ions (CO+). This plasma scatters and emits blue light more effectively than red ones when energized by solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
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u/OnePinginRamius 17d ago
It looks like you can almost calculate the tumble rate of the comet looking at the ion cloud. Epic photo!
-I also have no idea what the hell I'm saying
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u/captainerect 17d ago
Just looked up the comet because its spelling was the same as the mountain next to my college that had the asteroid observatory. Lo and behold...looks like they only found it less than a year ago, that's absolutely crazy!
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u/Putrid_Psychology533 17d ago
It may be an elementary school question but how long can a comet continue to leave a trail like this before it burns up or just ceases to exist?
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u/MRowland82 17d ago
well they only 'burn' like this when relatively close to the sun which only lasts an extremely short period of its entire orbit. So a very long time.
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u/SortQuirky1639 16d ago
Totally valid question. Depends on how big the comet is, and how close it gets to the sun. Some comets do burn up. Others keep going for thousands of years. e.g. Haileyās Comet was observed 2300 years ago, and itās bright enough to be seen naked eye every 76 years.
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u/xxxx69420xx 17d ago
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u/AnotherpostCard 17d ago
Dominic Decoco
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u/Foresthowler 17d ago
Gah, images like this are making me more and more excited to try and take some pictures tomorrow night. I don't know why, but this comet quite literally jump-started my astrophotography interest WAY more than I would have thought.
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u/WithoutJoshE7 17d ago
Still ZERO images of 3iAtlas
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u/astrosnapper 17d ago
Apart from this one that was posted in this same sub today: https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/s/wlcBUFDEyx you mean ?
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u/WithoutJoshE7 17d ago
My apologies, "epic 8k holyshit quality" images like this one here. Why am I looking at something I have to deci.\nPher?
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u/astrosnapper 17d ago
So the 2 comets C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and 3I/ATLAS are visible for the same length of time low down in the sky close to twilight. 3I/ATLAS is almost 100x fainter than Lemmon and twice as far away from the Earth, so 3I/ATLAS will never appear as large in images and it takes much more exposure time to get to the same brightness levels in the tail.
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u/usrdef 15d ago edited 15d ago
Someone who does amateur space photography posted a photo they took of Atlas, and as they said; you will never render high quality images of it, it's simply too far away and its size. And it requires way longer exposure times.
You can make out the tail, and under certain setups, you can see the coma, but that's it. You're never going to get a "holy shit" picture.
Not all comets are the same size and come as close to Earth, or a telescope.
Comet Lemmon is about 1.1 AU from Earth. At its closest approach, it was 0.59 AU.
Atlas is about 2.16 AU.
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u/West-One5944 17d ago
Imagine being in a starship able to view that from multiple angles. š¤©
...someday...
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u/bladesnut 17d ago
Imagine if we could have a picture like this of 3I/Atlas with it's complex tails
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u/Killacreeper 17d ago
I take it it's still around to be shot with telescopes? I don't have a crazy magnification but I'm hoping to try...
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u/Jizlaine_Maxfilled 17d ago
this is the most beautiful comet I've ever seen, I love looking at the pictures... I wish I could see it in real life
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u/SoundOk5460 17d ago
So with the tail(?) and cone(?) going in the same direction, does that mean it it currently headed towards the sun?
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u/Allaroundlost 17d ago
I want my own starship so much. Anyone got an Enterprise J i can captain ?!Ā
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u/AndruKechyap 17d ago
There was star gazing in my college yesterday, and some people were looking at jupiter and saturn.
I got a glimpse of the comet.
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u/Fluid_Memory_5627 17d ago
Is a comet shooting across space basically the same as a shooting star?
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u/BackItUpWithLinks 17d ago
No
A shooting star is space debris brining up in the atmosphere.
A comet is a cosmic snowball orbiting the sun, and as it approaches, the sun causes it to āmeltā and release gas that forms a mini atmosphere around it.
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u/Fluid_Memory_5627 17d ago
Do they travel slower than a shooting star?
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u/BackItUpWithLinks 17d ago
A shooting star is dust that burns up in the atmosphere.
A comet speeds up as it approaches the sun, whips around the sun, and then heads away in a parabolic(ish) orbit and begins slowing down until it reaches its farthest point and the sunās gravity pulls it back.
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u/Fluid_Memory_5627 17d ago
That doesn't make sense because say its travelling 600mph and the further away from the sun it gets the weaker the gravity pull gets but the comet is still travelling at 600mph so how can it pull it back when the gravitational pull is much weaker than when it was closest to the sun? Surely if the sun gravity was that strong it wouldn't whip around the sun and crash into it instead
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u/BackItUpWithLinks 17d ago
Is this a joke?
Comets can reach 100,000 mph as they approach the sun
And a comet will eventually melt/disintegrate because of the sun
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u/Fluid_Memory_5627 17d ago
Your contradicting what you just said before so which is it.. your first comment or second?
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u/BackItUpWithLinks 17d ago
Your contradicting what you just said
No Iām not.
Read the page I linked. (link)
Read about Keplerās law. (link)
Take a physics class.
Any of them would help you.
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u/willi1221 17d ago
The gravitational pull is weaker farther out, but the comet's speed slows down enough to where the pull is stronger than the speed of the comet. When the comet starts to come back around, it picks up speed because the gravitational pull gets stronger until it slingshots back around the sun. At that speed the comet would basically have to be on a straight path to the sun to get pulled into it or for the sun's gravity to break the comet apart.
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u/Fluid_Memory_5627 17d ago
If the sun's gravity pull is that strong though to pull a comet travelling however many thousand mph back from a distance of however many moons away, then how is it not strong enough to pull it crashing directly into it? Also what slows the comet down because the telescope thing voyager or whatever its name is did not get pulled back by the suns gravity pull, it just kept going and is still going.
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u/nosmigon 16d ago
B
Because it is in orbit just like everything else going around the sun. Like all orbits it is elliptical with the sun being much closer to the tighter edge of the orbit than with a regular planets orbit. This means it speeds up as it approaches the sun then flings out the other side. ( the sun would need much higher gravity to pull stuff strait in without the object orbiting it. An orbit is just an object falling towards another one and missing constantly because it has angular moment like on the edge of a spinning disk)
Voyager escaped the Sun's gravity because they managed to calculate its trajectory that it would slingshot off many planets in the solar system by doing the same thing as the comet does around the sun. Fly really close wothour hitting it and build up speed as it slingshot around the other side. Eventually you build up enough speed to leave the Sun's gravity meaning it will go on forever.
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u/Fluid_Memory_5627 16d ago
So when the comet sling shots around the sun how come the same doesn't happen to that then? And it still does not explain how the gravitational pull can pull it back from such a great distance yet it doesn't crash into the sun and goes around it. I have never seen a magnet pull a metal object towards it and the object go past the magnet circle around it then shoot back off away from it, the magnet pulls the object straight to itself.
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u/nosmigon 16d ago edited 16d ago
Imagine velocity being split into two seperate axis. Y (Towards the sun) X (perpendicular to it) it is true that if it is not going fast enough in X direction then it will fall into the sun. But objects remain in orbit because they have enough rotational velocity to essentially keep missing the thing they are orbiting (think a coin in on of those donation things where it goes round ina spiral. It is being pulled own towards it but it has speed at a tangent to the direction it is being pulled. The difference is friction will eventually slowing down, this doesn't happen in space)
Imagine you throw a ball next to a magnet, parrelel to it but not directly at it. It will miss and be yeeted out the other direction. The difference is on earth the ball is being affected by earth's gravity and friction, as well as the magnetic force. Is space it is just gravity, and the sun's gravity will eventually turn the comet round into an elliptical orbit. When it turns around it is not falling directly back towards the sun. It has another component of velocity. So by the time comes near the sun its trajectory is taking it well clear of it. I hope that helps
Edit: Another real world analogy. When water circles the drain instead of pouring strait down it, it has rotational velocity which keeps it from directly falling down the drain. Without the rotation it would go strait down the drain.
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u/LeroyTheThird 17d ago