Discovery The comet was spotted in images obtained by the 1.8-m
Ritchey-Chretien telescope at
Haleakala, Hawaii, as part of the
PanSTARRS survey, at an apparent magnitude of about 20. The head of the comet appeared diffuse, about 2.5 arcseconds across, and there was no tail visible. A broad tail 10 arcseconds long was visible in follow-up images by the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. On 11 September the comet was from the Sun.
Follow-up observations In January the comet was around magnitude 17, but afterwards the comet started to brighten quickly. In mid March it had brighened to about magnitude 9. On 20 March 2026 the comet was detected visually in 10x50
binoculars by
Alan Hale. On 21 March the tail of the comet was about one degree long. On April 4 the comet had an apparent magnitude of about 6 and its coma 3 arcminutes across under moonlight and the comet near the horizon. On 7 April 2026 was 33 degrees from the Sun, its maximum elongation between the two solar conjunctions. On 8 April, its ion tail was at least 7 degrees long, but little dust tail was visible. At that time the comet was moving slowly at the western half of the
Pegasus Square, but its motion was accelerating as the elongation started to reduce. On 11 April the comet was spotted with
naked eye, with an estimated magnitude of 5.1. It reached
perihelion, at , on 19 April 2026 when it was 20 degrees from the Sun. It then moved between the Sun and Earth and the brightness of the dust tail was significantly enhanced by
forward scattering. It reached
solar conjunction on 25 April 2026 around 05:23 UT when it was 3.5 degrees from the Sun. The comet passed from Earth on 26 April 2026. It entered SOHO LASCO C3 FOV on 23 April and CCOR-1 on 24 April. Its future (outbound) trajectory shows the comet being ejected from the Solar System. == See also ==