That is a beautiful image of Comet C/2024 E1 (Wierzchoś), which was closest to Earth last week, but at a distance of 1.012 AU. far behind the end of the tail lies the spiral galaxy NGC 300.
It requires binoculars or a telescope and a dark sky to see it in the evening sky.
The comet sports a characteristic green coma, a 5° long ion tail and 3 shorter dust tails.
The comet was discovered by polish astronomer Kacper Wierzchoś on 3 March 2024.
The high inclination Oort cloud comet has a hyperbolic trajectory and will leave the solar system.
The graphic below show the location of the comet in the night sky and its location in the solar system.
Here is another image taken by Ian Griffin on February 5, 2026 from New Zealand. Several spiral galaxies adorn the background.
Now let’s set our eyes on today’s puzzle composed in 1862 by noted American chess composer Eugene Beauharnais Cook (1830 – 1915). He was also a pioneering figure skater and author of the book American Chess-nuts: A Collection of Problems.
P.S.
The chess puzzle is published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. ET.
It is customary for advanced players to wait till midnight ET before posting the full solution. Before then, they provide some stats about the solution (e.g., the minimum number of distinct checkmate moves), help guide others, and sometimes post hints. But there are no hard-and-fast rules; feel free to post comments as you please.
Solution (shows first move only)