It is a good rule of thumb to try to see meteors with the naked eye. They move too quickly and they are too ephemeral to catch them with a telescope. Still, all good rules have exceptions, and this latest exception created a stunning mirage around Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) , as a red helix seems to wrap around the comet and its long tail. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The reason for the spiral it was the presence of a meteor. Astronomer and creator of the Virtual Telescope Project Gianluca Masi was taking pictures of Comet Lemmon on October 24 when a meteor flew through the western sky, where the comet is currently visible at the moment. Meteors are small fragments of ice or rocks, often from comets, that fly into

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