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Catalina Sky Survey director Carson Fuls was the first to notice Comet Lemmon, though he couldn\u2019t tell what it was at the time.<\/p>\n
He said it was \u201cjust a point\u201d in an image captured on Jan. 3 by the 60-inch Mount Lemmon Survey telescope<\/a>, so he reported it as a possible asteroid to the Minor Planet Center<\/a>, a global database maintained by the International Astronomical Union for tracking such things.<\/p>\n The Minor Planet Center ultimately identified it as a comet on Feb. 21, based on follow-up observations.<\/p>\n Comet Lemmon poses no risk to our planet. The closest it will get to us is roughly 55 million miles away, and that already happened at around 5 p.m. local time on Monday.<\/p>\n Fuls said current projections suggest Lemmon may grow slightly brighter in the sky through Oct. 27, when it should begin to dim.<\/p>\n Fuls<\/p>\n University of Arizona<\/p>\n \u201cComets are kind of notoriously hard to predict when it comes to how bright they\u2019re going to get,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n If you know just where to look, Comet Lemmon is already what astronomy buffs call \u201cbackyard visible\u201d with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope.<\/p>\n Fuls said he found it from his house in the Catalina Foothills on Sunday night using a pair of bird-watching binoculars, though it wasn\u2019t easy, even for him. \u201cI could see the corona and a bit of the tail,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was still quite dim.\u201d<\/p>\n The best way to see it is to go outside at about 6:30 or 7 p.m., roughly 30 minutes to an hour after sunset, and look north toward the Big Dipper. Lemmon will be located just below and to the west of the Dipper\u2019s handle, Fuls said.<\/p>\n It is supposed to be the brightest comet of 2025<\/a>, he said, but it is unlikely to be visible with the naked eye except in very dark places, free of most light pollution.<\/p>\n Comet C\/2025 A6 (Lemmon), or Comet Lemmon for short, glows green in a photo captured in late September by Adam Block from the University of Arizona\u2019s Steward Observatory.<\/p>\n Adam Block\/Steward Observatory\/University of Arizona<\/p>\n This is Comet Lemmon\u2019s first visit to the inner solar system in about 1,350 years. It won\u2019t be back again for another 1,150 years or so.<\/p>\n In photos<\/a> captured so far by astrophotographers, Lemmon glows green as a result of photons from the sun exciting carbon in the coma surrounding the flying ball of rocks, dust and melting ice, Fuls said. \u201cThe color helps us figure out \u2014 to some extent \u2014 what the comet is made of.\u201d<\/p>\n The Catalina Sky Survey operates nightly, except during the full moon, using nine full-time observers in staggered shifts. Each observer typically works three nights in a row and sleeps during the day between shifts in the crew quarters on the mountain. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a tough schedule,\u201d Fuls said, but the people doing it tend to love the work.<\/p>\n Instead of peering through the eyepiece of a telescope, they spend most of their time in front of a monitor, searching for unidentified asteroids and other objects in fresh images of the sky collected by as many as five different scopes used by the survey.<\/p>\n Advances in optics, computers and tracking software have made the job significantly easier over the years, but no replacement has yet been found for human eyes and intuition, Fuls said. \u201cThere is always a person in that loop.\u201d<\/p>\n A comet that could be visible to the naked eye this week was discovered in January using this 60-inch telescope on Mount Lemmon, part of the University of Arizona\u2019s Catalina Sky Survey.<\/p>\n University of Arizona Catalina Sky Survey<\/p>\n Had Lemmon been recognizable in that first image from Jan. 3, when it was still more than 418 million miles from the sun, we\u2019d all be referring to it as Comet Fuls now.<\/p>\n New comets are automatically named after the individuals who discover them, but only if the objects are identified as comets right away. Otherwise, they take the name of the facility that captured the first images of them, once they have been confirmed as comets.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why this Comet Lemmon is by no means the only Comet Lemmon. No fewer than 66 of them have been discovered from \u2014 and named for \u2014 the survey telescope on Mount Lemmon since 2006. Lemmon also appears in the hyphenated names of at least 19 other comets, for which the telescope north of Tucson is listed as the co-discoverer.<\/p>\n But don\u2019t feel bad for Fuls. He already has his name on 10 comets he has discovered himself since 2017 \u2014 a total that puts him in the middle of the pack among current observers<\/a> with the Catalina Sky Survey.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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