Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and The Milky Way over China
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What did Comet Lemmon look like when it was at its best? One example is pictured here, featuring three celestial spectacles all at different distances. The closest spectacle is the snowcapped Meili Mountains, part of the Himalayas in China's southwestern Yunnan province. The middle marvel is Comet Lemmon near its picturesque best earlier this month, showing not only a white dust tail trailing off to the right but its blue solar wind-distorted ion tail trailing off to the left. Far in the distance on the left is the magnificent central plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, featuring dark dust, red nebula, and including billions of Sun-like stars.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is already fading as it heads back into the outer Solar System, while the Himalayan mountains will gradually erode over the next billion years. The Milky Way Galaxy, though, will live on, forming new mountains and comets, for many billions of years into the future. Comet Lemmon passed nearest to the Earth—about half the Earth-Sun distance—on October 21, 2025.
The Himalayas, or Himalaya, is a mountain range in Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has examples of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than 100 peaks exceeding elevations of 7,200 m (23,600 ft) above sea level lie in the Himalayas. The Himalayas abut on or cross territories of six countries: Nepal, India, China, Bhutan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Yunnan is an inland province in southwestern China. The province borders the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, autonomous regions of Guangxi and Tibet, as well as Southeast Asian countries Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, and Laos.
Release Date: Nov. 25, 2025
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