Space and Astronomy Atlas

How The Universe Works
Celestial Objects

Comet Swift-Tuttle

Comets

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Comet Swift-Tuttle is a large periodic comet with an orbital period of about 133 years, moving in a 1:11 orbital resonance with Jupiter and fitting the classical definition of a Halley-type comet. It was independently discovered by Lewis Swift on 16 July 1862 and by Horace Parnell Tuttle three days later, and it is the parent body of the Perseid meteor shower, the debris trail its passages leave behind producing the bright meteors seen from Earth every August.

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