Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon & Messier 12 Star Cluster: View from New Mexico, USA

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon & Messier 12 Star Cluster: View from New Mexico, USA

Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. Besides Comet SWAN25B and Comet ATLAS, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with binoculars and on long camera exposures. Comet Lemmon was discovered early this year and is still headed into the inner Solar System. The comet will round the Sun on November 8, 2025. It passed nearest to the Earth—about half of the Earth-Sun distance—on October 21.

Messier 12 or M12 (also designated NGC 6218) is a globular cluster in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It was discovered by the French astronomer Charles Messier on May 30, 1764, who described it as a "nebula without stars". In dark conditions this cluster can be faintly seen with a pair of binoculars

Distance from Earth: approximately 15,700 light-years

New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also borders the state of Texas to the east and southeast, Oklahoma to the northeast, and shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora to the south.

Image Credit: A. Hwang 
Image Details: RASA11, 4x60 sec exposures
Date: Nov. 3, 2025

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