We are now at home during the four month saga of Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS). This is a break week for this thing as it heads to the long awaited meeting this weekend.
The comet was discovered on January 13, 2026, by a team of four astronomers. “MAPS” is an acronym that uses the first letters of the surnames of the discoverers: Alain Maury, Georges Attard, Daniel Parrott, and Florian Signoret. They found the comet using an 11-inch telescope AMACS1 of observation In the Atacama Desert of Chile. What makes this discovery unique is that Comet MAPS belongs to a special class of comets known as Kreutz sungrazers.
A day with a future
Saturday, April 4, is the date of Comet MAPS perihelion – when it will come closest to the sun. Based on updated orbital parameters published in the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) Circle#5675The comet will pass 101,100 miles (162,700 km) above the sun’s photosphere at 10:24 am EDT (1424 GMT, 7:24 am PDT). The comet will now be in the middle of completing a curved path around the sun, traveling at a speed of 518 kilometers per second.
Will it be visible?
It is also possible that the star may be very bright at this time, perhaps even bright enough to be seen during the day, although its proximity to the sun in the sky makes this a very dangerous proposition. Indeed, the infrared rays of the sun can burn the retina of the eye and cause irreparable damage, all without causing any pain and even sunglasses, binoculars, or binoculars will protect against the type of eye damage that may eventually result in blindness, when a person—however temporarily—accidentally looks directly into the sun’s rays.
To get a good (and safe) view of Comet MAPS as it approaches and quickly sweeps around the sun, reserve a seat near your computer and keep an eye on SOHO’s LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment) C3 camera, with access close-up pictures or videos from the last 24 hours.
Comet maps will be in the LASCO C3 image field from April 2 at 8:00 am EDT (1200 GMT) until April 6 at 1:00 am EDT (0500 GMT). For about four hours around perihelion on April 4, the comet will appear to pass behind the sun as seen from our view of the earth, then quickly swing and cross in front of the sun.
Sizzler or fizzler?
There has been a lot of discussion on social media lately, about whether Comet MAPS will put on a spectacular sight for naked eye observers after it sweeps the sun. Since some of the brightest comets in history have belonged to the Kreutz sungrazing family, hopes are rising that the celestial image will soon grace our western evening sky. Some have already christened Comet MAPS as “The Great Easter Comet of 2026.”
But will all this come true?
As it stands now, there seem to be three possible options for Comet MAPS:
Option 1: Disintegrates at or before perihelion
In this case, when the comet reaches the closest point to the sun, its nucleus, which is under the intense heat of the sun and the tidal pressure caused by the sun’s gravity, is completely destroyed. As you go around the sun, nothing remains to be seen.
Just like that the situation happened in November 2013 and Court ISON. Although not a member of the sun-grazing Kreutz family, Comet ISON still passes within 724,000 kilometers (1.16 million miles) of the sun’s orbit. It was highly recommended to be a good object for the naked eye, but instead, it experienced a major disturbance about a week before perihelion and almost completely broke up when it came close to the sun, except one piece, which had somehow survived and itself disbanded a few days later.
Option 2: It decays after perihelion
After this inscription, the comet reaches perihelion, then rapidly orbits the sun and returns to an apparently unstable position. But shortly thereafter, its core fragments separate and soon disintegrate.
An excellent example of this was the so-called Great Southern Comet of 1887; a member of the Kreutz family. Apparently it was just over 27,000 kilometers from the sun’s surface. In the last days after it became the middle of January, its head was described as a spreading mass, but what was more noticeable was its tail, which was described as a thin and thin beam of light. In comet history, the comet of 1887 was identified as “The Headless Miracle.” Another Kreutz comet was Meet Lovejoy in December 2011, which blew up about 140,000 kilometers from the sun’s surface. It which seems to have appeared it is solid and was clearly visible in the morning sky before Christmas, but a few days after perihelion, its core split violently, and it disappeared rapidly thereafter. An Australian observer described Comet Lovejoy’s most striking feature as the extreme 30-degree extension of its tail, but the head was “almost missing.” Another headless miracle!
Option 3. It survives perihelion
In this possible scenario, the comet orbits the sun and makes a spectacular display as it returns to space.
In this regard, we can cite “The Great Comet of 1965,” Ikeya-Sekiwhich was the brightest comet of the 20th century. It reached a magnitude of at least -10 (bright as a half moon) and was mild. visible near the sun in the afternoon. The comet was another member of the Kreutz sungrazers, which is more than 280,000 miles (450,000 km) from the Sun, and its nucleus is seen breaking into three separate pieces. However, in late October, it gave birth to a thin, curved bright tail, about the length of the handle of the Big Dipper, that appears above the southeastern horizon a few hours before sunset.
Breaking up is not that hard to do
An important point to note is that the one thing that unites these three options together is that in each case, the nucleus of the comet ended up breaking, the obvious result of being exposed to the intense heat of the sun as well as its great gravity, pulling the nucleus and separating it.
Ultimately, this may be the end of Comet MAPS.
Size matters
But which of the three will Comet MAPS fall into? A major aspect to consider is the core size. In the case of Comet Ikeya-Seki, it is believed to be about 8.7 kilometers in diameter.
However, it is possible that some of the comets we have discussed were the same very small.
The Great Southern Comet of 1887 is believed to have been 2.4 kilometers in diameter. Comet ISON is estimated to have been only 0.9 miles (1.4 km) in diameter, while the nucleus of Comet Lovejoy may have been only 0.3 km in diameter. To a latest technical paper published in March by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), an analysis of images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope suggests that the nucleus of Comet MAPS appears to be – in fact – very small, on the order of less than 0.2 miles (0.4 km) in diameter.
The AAS paper therefore concludes that, like Comet ISON, from thirteen years ago, the nucleus of Comet MAPS may be torn apart by torques (twisting forces that tend to cause rotation), causing it to disintegrate before perihelion, “. . . after that.”
That certainly does not bode well for the bright sky show.
Tail wagging comet?
So now, assuming that the nucleus of Comet MAPS completely disintegrates before, or shortly after, it gets very close to the sun, it suggests that we will see. nothing appear in the western sky in the evening of the second week of April, or . . . as was the case with the Great Southern Comet of 1887 and Comet Lovejoy in 2011, only the dusty remnants of the prominent tail will be seen high in the west, no head or coma.
In fact, in the end, the tail may be all that remains to be seen in Comet MAPS.
Prospective comet watchers should view that part of the sky near the western horizon between 45 minutes and an hour after sunset between April 8 and April 14. Sweeping the sky with binoculars can be useful when capturing the tail of Comet MMAPS against the bright sky. In fact, there is also a chance – albeit a small one – for a pleasant surprise, because comets often change and it seems that the only thing that can be predicted about them is unpredictability.
Or as the famous Canadian astronomer David Levy, who himself discovered 23 comets, happily said: “Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do exactly what they want!”
We here at Space.com will continue to update you on the latest developments regarding Comet MAPS, so stay tuned!
Joe Rao works as a lecturer and guest lecturer in New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astrology for Magazine of Natural History, The Sky and the Telescope, Old Farmer’s Almanac and other articles.
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