'RIP, Comet MAPS': Watch the superbright sungrazer become a 'headless wonder' after being ripped apart by the sun

A highly anticipated "sungrazer" comet is no more. Many experts expected the comet to shine so brightly that it could be seen in the daytime sky. Instead, the unfortunate object was ripped apart by a superclose "death dive" with our home star, which briefly transformed it into a "headless wonder" — a comet with no body, just a ghostly tail — stunning footage reveals.

The comet, dubbed C/2026 A1 (MAPS), was a member of the Kreutz sungrazers — a group of comets, likely leftover fragments from a massive exploded comet, that pass extremely close around the sun. Scientists discovered the comet in January and initially believed it was around 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) wide, but subsequent photos captured by the James Webb Space Telescope revealed that it was only around 0.25 miles (0.4 km) across.

For months, experts have been guessing how bright comet MAPS might become if it survived its solar slingshot. Most agreed that it would put on a spectacular show, like other previous sungrazer comets, such as comet Lovejoy, which lit up the night sky in 2011. Others even speculated that it could become so bright that it would become visible to the naked eye during the day.

On Saturday (April 4), comet MAPS reached its closest point to the sun, or perihelion, where it dipped into the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, at a distance of just 100,000 miles (160,000 km) from the solar surface — around half the distance between Earth and the moon. The close encounter was not visible to astrophotographers, thanks to the comet's close proximity to our home star. But several space-based observatories captured the solar flyby.

It quickly became clear that comet MAPS did not survive its solar slingshot. Time-lapse images captured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) show the bright comet streaking toward the sun and then emerging from the obscured solar disk as a plume of dust and gas — essentially, nothing but a tail.

The comet was likely destroyed by the intense thermal stress placed on its icy shell, or nucleus, as well as the high gravitational forces on the comet as it traveled at around 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h), according to Spaceweather.com.

"The comet went in, but only a cloud of debris came out," Spaceweather.com representatives wrote about the SOHO video footage. "RIP, comet MAPS."

The debris trails left over from comet MAPS, known as striae, briefly shone as a headless wonder. However, the debris quickly scattered, and there is now nothing left to see of comet MAPS, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported.

Luckily, comet MAPS is not the only highly anticipated comet that could be visible in April.

Later this month, another comet, C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), will shine brightly as it reaches its perihelion on April 19. But unlike comet MAPS, this object will pass much farther from the sun — around 46.4 million miles (74.6 million km) — making it a much more reliable target for skywatchers armed with a decent telescope or a pair of stargazing binoculars. The best time to see it will be a few days before its close approach to the sun, when the new moon guarantees a dark sky.

Several experts previously predicted that comet PanSTARRS could be the "Great Comet of 2026." And given the death of comet MAPS, this suggestion now seems more likely to be correct.