An astronomer recently aimed his telescope above Manciano, Italy, and caught something incredible: a bright comet seemingly wrapped up in the corkscrewing trail of a meteor, glittering in the same patch of sky like a cosmic barber shop pole.
With millions of miles separating the foreground meteor and the background comet, the odds of capturing such a fortuitous shot were (excuse the pun) astronomically low.
“In this photograph, the meteor’s afterglow appears to coil around the comet’s ion tail — a pure perspective miracle,” astronomer Gianluca Masi, founder of The Virtual Telescope Project and the photographer who captured the stunning shot, wrote in a statement. “The former is an atmospheric effect induced by the meteor, while the comet itself was about 100 million kilometers [62 million miles] away.”
The comet seen here is C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) — one of three comets taking the solar system by storm right now, along with Comet R2 (SWAN) and the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS. Comet Lemmon, which reached its closest point to Earth on Oct. 21, is the brightest of the bunch and has remained visible enough to be seen through simple telescopes and stargazing binoculars for the following several days.
Masi spotted the comet on the night of Oct. 24. Its long, blue tail — the product of ionized gas that’s been vaporized off of the comet’s surface and blown away by the solar wind — was clearly visible. But for several minutes during Masi’s observations, another streamer-like structure became visible near the comet: the wispy remnants of an ion trail left by a meteor plummeting through Earth’s atmosphere.
Seen here as a golden line spiraling around the comet; the meteor trail evolved constantly over the course of Masi’s observations, briefly appearing like a part of the comet itself. In reality, the trail is a result of chemical reactions in the atmosphere triggered by the meteor’s ultrafast passage.
“The phenomenon is associated with the ionization of molecular oxygen in the atmosphere caused by the meteor event, followed by its recombination, which produces the emission of light at that wavelength,” Masi said.
While meteors typically move at more than 100,000 mph (160,000 km/h), their trails can linger in the sky for several minutes, according to NASA. During this time, winds blowing at different altitudes can sculpt those trails into meandering streamer shapes like the one seen here. Masi also posted a time-lapse video of the meteor event on YouTube showing how the glowing trail whipped through the sky in front of the comet for several minutes.
The phenomenon of spiral meteor trails has not been extensively studied, but they are considered relatively rare. A series of papers published in the 1980s and 1990s estimated that only 0.5% of observed meteors leave a nonlinear trail. However, this number is far from certain and may have been skewed by suboptimal camera settings used to record meteor trails at the time.
The annual Orionid meteor shower — an event triggered by the debris of Halley’s comet — peaked on Oct. 20-21, the same night Comet Lemmon was at its brightest. Although the shower is waning, it will last until Nov. 7, meaning more “shooting stars” like the one Masi caught are possible at night. Keep your eyes on the skies, and maybe you’ll spot a “miracle” of your own.