A newly discovered comet could put on a dazzling show in the coming weeks and, if it survives a fiery brush with the sun, could even become an “Easter Comet” visible in early April.
Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was discovered photographically on January 13 at the AMACS1 observatory in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, by four French astronomers. The group runs a dedicated near-Earth asteroid search program called MAPS, an acronym based on their surnames – Alain Maury, Georges Attard, Daniel Parrott and Florian Signoret.
The article continues below
Since then, the comet has brightened 600 times to magnitude 11, bright enough to be easily detected in amateur telescopes with 8- to 10-inch apertures. It is likely to increase in brightness over the coming days and weeks as it races toward an extreme encounter with the Sun on April 4.
Why it’s exciting
What makes this potentially exciting is that Comet MAPS has been identified as a Kreutz sungrazer. Some of the brightest comets in history were members of the Kreutz group. Examples include the Great Comets of 1843 and 1882, and Comet Ikeya-Seki of 1965. The last Kreutz comet to perform well was Comet Lovejoy in December 2011.
Comet MAPS will arrive at its perihelion — its closest approach to our star — around 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on April 4.
At that moment, the comet will pass just 99,000 miles (159,300 km) from the sun’s photosphere. Since it will pass through the Sun’s intensely hot corona, where temperatures can reach around 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), there is a possibility that the comet may not survive, likely either completely consumed by the extreme heat or torn apart by the Sun’s massive gravitational tidal forces.
But Lovejoy’s predicted path do not take it directly into the sun. To escape such a fate, the comet must move incredibly fast. Around the time of its closest approach, the comet will whip around the sun in a hairpin-like curve at a speed of over 1 million miles per hour.
Daytime visibility?
On his Visual comets in the future website, Seiichi Yoshida of Japan has Comet MAPS peaking near magnitude -5 at perihelion, which would make it about as bright as Venus.
About that time, the comet will pass directly to the left of the Sun, possibly tempting someone to try to see it as a spot of light by blocking the blinding sun disk with their thumb or outstretched hand.
But as in the case of seeing a partial solar eclipseare there inherent dangers in attempting to view a comet so close to the Sun. Seeing the comet itself poses no danger, but potential danger lies in staring at the sun, whose infrared rays can burn the retina of the eye and cause irreparable damage, all without causing pain. It should be emphasized that neither sunglasses, telescopes nor binoculars will protect against the type of eye damage that can eventually lead to blindness when a person, however short, looks directly into the sun’s rays.
The safest way to watch
By far the surest way to see the comet’s proximity to the Sun is to view it on your computer screen courtesy of Solar and Heliospheric observatory (“SOHO”). Astronomers hope to get spectacular views of the comet using SOHO’s LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment) C3 camera and gain access to either almost living images or videos spanning the past 24 hours.
Back in October 2024, the audience was captivated when SOHO captured Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS sweeps closely past the sun. Since its launch in 1995, literally thousands of otherwise unknown comets have been first discovered in SOHO images, creating competition among a handful of armchair astronomers. To date, SOHO officials have reported more than 5,000 comet discoveries using the spacecraft’s LASCO C3 images.
Comet MAPS will be within range of the LASCO C3 images from 2 April at 8:00 a.m. EDT (12:00 p.m. GMT) until April 6 at 1 a.m. EDT (5 a.m. UTC). During a period of about four hours centered on the time of perihelion, the comet will appear to pass behind the Sun as seen from our earthly perspective, then rapidly swing around and cross in front of the Sun.
