Comet MAPS Is Gone — What Killed It & What Comes Next + Planet Parade Tonight

About this episode

This episode discusses the end of Comet MAPS, upcoming space missions, and recent astronomical discoveries.

In this episode of Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery cover six space and astronomy stories for Saturday, April 18, 2026. Comet MAPS has met its end at the Sun — the pair reflect on what happened and what comes next. Artemis III's SLS rocket stage rolls out of New Orleans on Monday. JWST and ALMA have revealed a stunning monster spiral galaxy hiding behind cosmic dust 11.5 billion years ago. An exoplanet system is changing its orbital architecture in real time. Four planets are gathering in a pre-dawn planet parade visible tonight. And 33,000 hydrogen halos have been found that solve a decades-old mystery about the early universe's fuel supply. Story 1: Comet MAPS — Death of a Sungrazer Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS), a Kreutz sungrazer discovered on January 13, 2026 by French amateur astronomers at the AMACS1 Observatory in Chile, disintegrated during its close solar approach on April 4. The nucleus — estimated at approximately 400 metres in diameter based on JWST observations — could not survive passage just 160,000 km above the solar surface. A brief dust tail was visible in coronagraph images from SOHO and GOES-19, but the debris cloud has since dispersed. Attention now shifts to Comet…

People in this episode

Hosts: Anna, Avery

Topics covered

• comets
• space exploration
• planetary science
• astronomy news
• galaxies
• exoplanets

Keywords

• Comet MAPS
• Artemis III
• JWST
• ALMA
• planet parade
• exoplanets
• galaxies
• hydrogen halos

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: NASA, JWST, ALMA, SOHO, GOES-19

Places: New Orleans

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