Comet Bradfield is easy to see on the left, but can you find Comet LINEAR on the right? Last week, just before sunrise from the northern hemisphere, two bright comets were visible in the same part of the sky at the same time. The above long-exposure image was taken on the morning of April 25 from Joshua Tree National Park in California, USA. Comet C/2004 F4 (Bradfield) is giving an unexpectedly good show as it recedes from the Sun and Earth and fades from view. Its tail is estimated by some to be about 10 degrees long. Having just rounded the Sun itself, Comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) is now moving toward the Earth. Although intrinsically fading, T7 will appear to brighten until about mid-May and so continue to be visible to the unaided eye before sunrise to southern hemisphere observers into June. Q4, the third coincidental naked eye comet, will become visible in mid-May to northern hemisphere observers.

Closest to the Sun on March 1, and closest to planet Earth on April 23, this Comet ATLAS (C/2020 R4) shows a faint greenish coma and short tail in this pretty, telescopic field of view. Captured at its position on May 5, the comet was within the boundaries of northern constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), and near the line-of-sight to intriguing background galaxies popularly known as the Whale and the Hockey Stick. Cetacean in appearance but Milky Way sized, NGC 4631 is a spiral galaxy seen edge-on at the top right, some 25 million light-years away. NGC 4656/7 sports the bent-stick shape of interacting galaxies below and left of NGC 4631. In fact, the distortions and mingling trails of gas detected at other wavelengths suggest the cosmic Whale and Hockey Stick have had close encounters with each other in their distant past. Outbound and only about 7 light-minutes from Earth this Comet ATLAS should revisit the inner solar system in just under 1,000 years.