Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) a Kreutz 'Sun-grazing Comet' 04-04-2026

 

Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) heading towards the Sun .
SOHO Coronagraph GOES. Credit:Live Science, Image Credit:
ESA and NASA. (Not an animation - recorded by SOHO camera.)

" We were hoping to capture an image of this 'Kreutz Comet' before it's encounter with the Sun today. It is predicted to fly through the very hot Solar Corona and will be 'lucky' to survive the encounter. If it does, it may well be a bright comet visible from the UK. 'God and Clouds', willing we shall try to obtain images of what remains from the JPO". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

'Kreutz Comets an Overview'

The Kreutz family of comets are a group of so‑called “sungrazers”—icy remnants that orbit the Sun on nearly identical paths. They’re all fragments of a single giant comet that broke apart centuries ago. Each one swings extremely close to the Sun at perihelion, sometimes within just one or two solar diameters of its surface. In this fiery environment—inside the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona—temperatures soar high enough to vaporize rock and metal. Many Kreutz comets do not survive this encounter, disintegrating into dust that forms short‑lived tails visible in spacecraft images.

Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) is a newly discovered member of this family. Found in January 2026 from the Atacama Desert in Chile, it will pass only about 160,000 km (0.0057 AU) from the Sun’s surface—just over one solar radius—at perihelion on April 4, 2026, around 14:20 UTC. That’s closer than Mercury’s orbit by a factor of more than 40.

Before perihelion, it showed a blue‑green coma (a glowing gas cloud) and a faint tail stretching for tens of thousands of kilometers. As it nears the Sun, Comet MAPS is expected to reach extreme brightness due to forward scattering of sunlight, possibly rivaling the full Moon in intensity. However, it will be almost impossible to see with the naked eye at that moment because it will lie only a few arcminutes from the Sun’s blinding glare. Spacecraft such as SOHO and Solar Orbiter will likely capture its closest approach. If it survives, it could reappear in the evening sky a few days later—earning the nickname “the Easter Comet" - Professor G.P.T Chat visiting astrophysicist at the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Image of C/2026 A1 (MAPS) captured before perihelion by the James Webb Space Telescope NASA/ESA