Going, going, …

Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) continues to fade after its apparent fracturing sometime during the early days of April. This animation shows 30 minutes of motion on the morning of 12 April. The brightness near the center of the coma is elongated and there is no central condensation indicating the nucleus is losing structure.

 
The still image is the first of the 60 images that I used to create the animation.

The comet is still well above the plane of the solar system but is just about to cross the orbit of the Earth.
 

C/2019 Y4 orbit diagram (side view) courtesy of JPL Small-Body Database

C/2019 Y4 orbit diagram (top view) courtesy JPL Small-Body Database