Comets in 2026

This comet passed just 0.006 AU from the centre of the Sun on April 4, 2026, which is roughly 200,000 miles above the solar surface and well inside the corona. Sungrazers that pass this close rarely survive the encounter. Comets on paths like this one are usually followed by solar observatories such as SOHO rather than from the ground.

Discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey in Hawaii, this comet reached perihelion at 0.499 AU on April 19, 2026. Its orbit is hyperbolic, which means it is not bound to the Sun and will not return. Comets like this one make a single pass through the inner solar system and then leave it for good.

This Jupiter Family Comet reached perihelion at 0.604 AU on September 22, 2026, and it returns every 4.2 years. It is the parent body of the Alpha Capricornid Meteor Shower, so the dust it sheds on passes like this one is the same dust that burns up in our atmosphere each July.

This comet began breaking apart in 1995, and by its 2006 return it had shattered into dozens of pieces. NASA JPL now tracks the fragments as separate objects on their own slightly different orbits. More than a dozen of them reach perihelion between October and December 2026, each at about 0.94 AU from the Sun.

Discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1873, 10P is one of the most thoroughly observed comets in the catalogue, with nearly 7,000 recorded observations behind its orbit. It came to perihelion at 1.417 AU on August 3, 2026, and returns roughly every 5.4 years.

A Halley-type comet on a 21.4 year orbit, 161P reaches perihelion at 1.265 AU on November 15, 2026. Halley-type comets take between 20 and 200 years to circle the Sun, which places them between the short-period Jupiter Family Comets and the long-period comets that arrive from the Oort Cloud.