Though the comet can become very bright at perihelion, its close proximity to the Sun makes it all but impossible to observe at that time. Luckily we have a number of spacecraft observing the Sun which can also be used to observe the comet. One such spacecraft, the joint ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is currently picking up the comet. The image below is the latest image from the LASCO instruments on the spacecraft. [Update:  96P has now moved out of the SOHO LASCO field-of-view.

Perihelion occurred on July 14.78 UT (or roughly 11:40 am Tucson time on the 14th, that’s 11:40 am PDT, 12:40 pm MDT, 1:40 pm CDT, 2:40 pm EDT). By the end of July, the comet will be visible in the evening sky as a faint and difficult 9-10th magnitude object for telescope observers.