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2025 Charles Lillo 2025 Charles Lillo

Comet Lemmon Meets NGC 3184

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and the spiral galaxy NGC 3184 share this wide-field view captured from Texas. While the comet streaks across the foreground sky, its pale green and blue coma and delicate ion tail trace the effects of solar wind and radiation pressure on volatile gases escaping from its icy nucleus.

In the background, NGC 3184 quietly resides 39.5 million light-years away in Ursa Major. This face-on intermediate spiral galaxy, moving at about 821 km/s relative to the cosmic microwave background, contrasts beautifully with the fleeting visitor from our own Solar System, a rare cosmic alignment of motion and distance captured in a single frame.

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