While grazing the Sun, comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) disintegrated on April 4, putting an end to several weeks of wild speculation.
Promising comet:
C/2026 A1 (MAPS) kept astronomers in suspense for almost three months. This comet was discovered on January 13, 2026 by four amateurs, Alain Maury, Georges Attard, Florian Signoret and Daniel Parrott. I also presented this discovery to you here, while the hairy star had not yet received its official designation:
Initial calculations revealed that the comet was part of the Kreutz group. This group has some famous members, like C/2011 W3 Lovejoy, and especially C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki), which was visible in broad daylight. A relationship which, as you can well imagine, has ignited the imagination! During a webinar organized by the SAF on March 14, astronomers took stock of this discovery. All that remained was to wait for the passage to perihelion, to find out if the comet would survive:
On April 4, everyone was able to see C/2026 A1 (MAPS) racing towards the Sun, hidden by the cover of the LASCO coronagraph (Large Angle and Spectrometric COronagraph). The rest will remain hidden from us forever, but we can easily imagine it. Less than 200,000 kilometers from the surface of our star, C/2026 A1 (MAPS) literally vaporized. A few hours later, we identified what could be a cloud of cometary debris moving away from the Sun:
You might like:
Follow astronomical news and discover my images of the sky by subscribing to Cielmania on Facebook.
