I had comet C/2025 A6 ( Lemmon) on my mind for a while, waiting for an opportunity to catch it. Endless cloudy nights have been the pattern of autumn so far this year. In the early hours of September 28th, I woke up and looked through the Velux window. It was clear at 05:45, and yes, I knew it might be too bright for viewing, but I just had to try. I got my 15X70 binoculars out, but had no luck finding it. Dragged the scope out to the front of the house, popped in a 32 mm eyepiece, and there it was.
It was no more than a fuzzy blob, but it gave me great joy to look at it. The comet was getting dimmer by the minute as the sky in the northeast brightened. I felt so lucky to capture it on paper and planned to follow its movements as it headed under Ursa Major.
However, the weather gods had another idea, and they were obviously laughing at my notions of drawing the journey this visitor would take in the pristine skies above my head. The endless clouds took themselves very seriously and planned all kinds of crazy weather to hide this beautiful comet. This included the remnants of Hurricane Humberto spinning into the jet stream, morphing into Storm Amy and impacting us here on the West Coast very severely.
I adore comets because they morph as they move through space. This makes them very interesting to me, visually and in their physical actions. They can brighten as they head towards the sun. They can brighten and spin if gas inside them breaks out through the comet’s icy surface. Their tails can be involved in a disconnection event and separate from the parent body. Their colour can tell the story of their contents. They can become visible to the naked eye, which enables most people without telescopes or binoculars to see them.
Many comets have been kind to me, allowing me to see them and capture them on paper. In their journeys, they are sometimes close to other stellar objects. Nebulas, star clusters, planets, as well as Earth-based subjects like islands or mountains that they visually pass over. These, for me, are special moments in astronomical drawing. Like the comet Neowise over Clare Island, late-night drawings with the island present in the afterglow of summer sundown.
C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is under Ursa Major at the moment, heading up
towards Canes Venatici. The moon might interfere for a few days, but it’s worth a try till ye find it.
Circumpolar for Northern Latitudes above 48 N at the moment.
