Technologies

Catch These Rare Comets Zooming Past Earth This October

The Lemmon comet won’t return for another 1,300 years.

A pair of once-in-a-lifetime comets will rocket through our skies this October. It’s a rare treat for skywatchers, as they won’t be back again for hundreds of years.

The comets — C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and C/2025 R2 (SWAN) — look similar from our perspective. You can spot these green gaseous globes and their streaming tails now. But the comets will be even easier to see later this month.

SWAN will shine the brightest around Oct. 20, NBC News reports. Just a day later, on Oct. 21, Lemmon will make its peak showing in the dark sky.

If you want to witness these comets shooting past Earth, the coming weeks will be the best time. There won’t be another chance; the next time SWAN will come by again will be in 650 to 700 years, and Lemmon won’t return for another 1,300 years, CNN reports.

Comets are known to buck even the most careful predictions, but wary observers might catch these rare spectacles in October from their backyards in the pre-dawn morning or night sky.

New comets on the scene

Lemmon and SWAN were both discovered in 2025. Lemmon was discovered on Jan. 3 in Arizona by the Mount Lemmon Survey — using a 60-inch telescope installed on Mt. Lemmon to find celestial objects — which lent the comet its name.

«Current models are showing the comet will likely peak between 3.5 and 4.5 magnitudes when it is nearest to Earth on October 21, which is dimmer than what they showed last week,» Saint Louis Science Center wrote in an October update. «This is still bright enough that it could become naked-eye visible from light-polluted locations.»

A Ukrainian amateur astronomer named Vladimir Bezugly discovered the SWAN comet on Sept. 11 while he was looking through images captured by SWAN, a science instrument called Solar Wind ANisotropies, which is installed on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory in space.

«It was an easy comet for detection due to sufficient brightness in the (ultraviolet) band and location in the SWAN images, exactly in its center,» Bezugly told Universe Today. He also noted it’s the 20th official SWAN comet so far.

How to see Lemmon and SWAN this October

The darker the night sky, the easier it will be to see comets, moons, planets and stars. If you live in a city, bundle up and take an evening skygazing trip to the country where there’s less light pollution, with blankets, chairs and something warm to drink.

It takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Find a comfortable spot where you can stay still and gaze up. The comets might be bright enough to see without aid, but NASA recommends binoculars as a great entry-level stargazing tool.

Telescopes are one of the best ways to skygaze, and you might be able to find one to use or rent at your local library or university. But modern telescopes can also be fairly affordable.

Smartphone apps can also be helpful when trying to identify celestial phenomena and where to find them. Check out our list of stargazing apps for a few recommendations.

A sky full of wonders

Aside from the newly discovered comets, skywatchers have a few other cosmic treats to enjoy this month.

The Orionids meteor shower — when Earth travels through the massive tail of Halley’s Comet — began earlier this month, but you’ll be able to see the meteors through the beginning of November.

The next supermoon, known as the beaver moon, will take place on Nov. 5.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Dec. 5 #642

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Dec. 5, No. 642.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, and the theme is interesting. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Feeling peckish?

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Can I see a menu?

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

BAKE, BAKER, BONE, BONES, SIRS, FUNS, FACT, BUTT, DIET, DIETS, GREW, STEW, GOUT, DINE, NEST, NETS, TEAK

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

BAKERY, CAFE, BISTRO, BUFFET, BREWERY, STEAKHOUSE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is DININGOUT. To find it, start with the D that is three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Dec. 5

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 5.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Three of the clues involve a now-infamous Gen Z/Gen Alpha joke, so you might want to have a young person nearby. Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Beaver’s building project
Answer: DAM

4A clue: Unit of distance originally equivalent to 1,000 paces
Answer: MILE

5A clue: Number of dwarfs or deadly sins
Answer: SEVEN

6A clue: Extra-large film format
Answer: IMAX

7A clue: Crosses (out)
Answer: XES

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Difficult-to-work-with stars
Answer: DIVAS

2D clue: U.S. soccer star ___ Morgan
Answer: ALEX

3D clue: Roughly half of the adult population
Answer: MEN

4D clue: 5-Down-5-Across, for one
Answer: MEME

5D clue: Broadway musical about the wives of Henry VIII
Answer: SIX

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Technologies

The Mystery of the iPhone 17 Pro’s Missing Night Mode for Portraits

Is it a bug? Is it a technical issue? Or did Apple just yank a camera feature that wasn’t popular?

It’s a mystery. Night mode isn’t available in Portrait Mode on the iPhone 17 Pro, and no one seems to know why. Yet.

Night mode automatically brightens photos and captures more details, even in low-light conditions. You can adjust the exposure time manually. In Portrait mode, the camera focuses sharply on the subject you’re snapping and blurs the background, creating a depth-of-field effect.

The first clue that Night mode for Portrait mode was gone came from an Apple support document titled Take Night mode photos with your iPhone camera. It states what many iPhone aficionados already know: «Night mode automatically brightens photos and captures more detail in low light.»

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Night mode for the iPhone 17 Pro is listed in two separate parts of the iPhone online user guide (here and also here) for selfies and time-lapse photos. But it isn’t included on the guide’s list for snapping Night mode photos in Portrait mode. The feature is still available on iPhone Pro and Pro Max on the 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 series.

Upon investigation, CNET staffers verified that, indeed, Night mode is no longer an option in Portrait mode with the iPhone 17 Pro.

An Apple representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

When the iPhone 17 Pro was launched in September, Andrew Lanxon, CNET’s lead photographer in Europe, was impressed by the camera upgrades over the iPhone 16 Pro, including optical zoom that doubled to 8x, a telephoto camera sensor 56% larger than before and 48 megapixels of resolution.

Lanxon, a professional photographer and YouTuber, was excited to get shooting with the iPhone 17 Pro. But apparently, he will have to do without Night mode in Portrait mode.

Why did Apple do it?

Why was Night mode removed? «There doesn’t appear to be a hardware reason for it,» said CNET senior writer Jeff Carlson. «The Lidar camera that helps with low-light focusing and depth perception is still there. Perhaps it’s a software issue, but as of the iOS 26.2 release candidate, the feature isn’t present.»

Carlson found it curious that it’s taken three months since the launch of the new pro model before people noticed that it’s missing. He speculates that the feature was possibly removed because it «wasn’t being used and Apple could devote other processing resources elsewhere,» he said. «Perhaps something broke in the development of the new operating system and revamped Camera app, and it hasn’t been a high enough priority to fix in the regular release schedule.

«People have gotten used to having iPhone models that enable shots that are otherwise difficult for smartphone cameras, especially on a flagship like the iPhone 17 Pro,» Carlson said. «I hope the feature returns to give everyone the most control over the photos they capture.»

One parallel might be what Samsung did earlier this year — removing S Pen Bluetooth connectivity on the new S25 Ultra. Samsung said they removed the feature because not many people were using it. Is Apple doing the same thing with Night mode for portraits?

Some people miss it, some don’t

A subreddit on the topic appeared to be a mix of «who cares» and «oh darn.» Redditor kaoss_pad was «low key happy» that the feature had vanished, saying that «it would often surprise me and activate when I didn’t want it and ruin a moment.»

Some Redditors weren’t even aware of the feature. CultofCedar posted, «lol didn’t even notice that wasn’t a thing,» and Successful-Cover5433 wrote, «I didn’t even know you could.»

A couple of folks weren’t happy about the mysterious disappearance, including nsfdrag, who posted, «Kind of a bummer, I like the feature.»