Comet Lemmon and bright unknown satellite
Taken by Dewey Vanderhoff on October 18, 2025 @
downtown Cody Wyoming USA
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Camera Used: NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5300
Exposure Time: 80/10
Aperture: f/1.0
ISO: 2000
Date Taken: 2025:10:18 19:50:25
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Details:
Faith , luck, and comet photography. I pointed the camera where Comet Lemmon was charted to be. It was not visible to the naked eye, even in excellent sky conditions, but a series of bracketed exposures revealed it . There between bright star Arcturus and the handle of the Big Dipper was the glowing green ball with a faint badminton cock tail. Then came the satellite.
A fairly bright satellite came down from the north in polar orbit heading south. It passed above Comet Lemmon. My 8 second exposure captured them both. Faith in knowing where the comet should be; luck that a spacecraft did a cameo appearance ; good basic night sky astrophoto technique.I was set up in my own backyard , looking at the neighbor's rooftop and her screened cat balcony.
I do not know the identity of the satellite/ spacecraft, except that it was quite bright. Brighter than some ISS passes , approximately Mag 2- 1.5 Heavens Above gave no clue to anything in the vicinity. ( It was not an aircraft )
Nikon D5300 dslr with old 35mm f/2.0 manual focus prime lens ; exposure was 8 secs. at f/2.8 set to ISO 2000. Image was post-processed in GraphicConverter to reduce overall image size , then Nik D-Fine plugin to reduce noise.
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
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