When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.A bright, neon-like aurora radiates above Earth, seemingly absorbing Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) as it soars past the planet at a distance of about 57.2 million miles (92.1 million kilometers) in October 2025. | Credit: NASAAstronauts orbiting Earth recently photographed not one but two comets while an aurora show danced below them.The International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 73 crew took several pictures of comets Lemmon (C/2025 A6) and SWAN (C/2025 R2) in recent weeks that were just posted to NASA’s website and social media pages after the end of the long government shutdown.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement”Comets Lemmon and SWAN soar millions of miles away from Earth, beaming with auroras and airglow, in these celestial images from the orbital outpost captured in October,” NASA officials wrote on the ISS X feed on Wednesday (Nov. 18).Comets are small bodies made of ice and dust; when they approach our sun, radiation pressure and heat give them spectacular tails. Auroras are light shows that happen when charged particles from the sun interact with Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, while airglow is luminescence caused by chemical reactions high in the atmosphere.NASA didn’t say who on the crew took the photos, but they look very similar to images taken by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui. Yui, unlike the NASA crew, was able to keep posting on social media channel X during the shutdown. (The NASA astronauts were allowed to perform only essential duties during the shutdown, such as ISS science and maintenance.)Yui provided descriptions of his photos as well. “You can … distinguish between the two types of tails: ion and dust,” Yui wrote (in Japanese; translation by xAI’s Grok tool) on Oct. 20 of a Lemmon image with the comet backdropped by a starry, bluish-purple sky. (NASA posted a similar image from that same day on its website.)Comet Swan (C/2025 R2) appears above Earth’s yellow-green airglow just before an orbital sunrise, at a distance of about 27.2 million miles (43.8 million kilometers) from the planet. | Credit: NASAMore images came quickly. “After a busy day comes to an end, I’ve been continuing to take photos to soothe my fatigue. Lately, my source of healing has been Lemmon-chan, I suppose?” Yui posted on X with a series of images on Oct. 22. “I find myself thinking things like, ‘What kind of expression will you show me today, I wonder?’ and heading toward the window, and that moment feels as enjoyable as heading out on a date.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementYui sent out another image series on Oct. 21, noting changes in Lemmon’s brightness and tail — as well as changes in Earth’s atmosphere. Both the Oct. 21 and Oct. 22 photo sets on Yui’s feed are similar to an Oct. 23 image on NASA’s website.Then, on Oct. 24, Yui found Lemmon appearing to mel …
