109P/Swift-TuttleParent body of the annual Perseid meteor shower
Comet Swift-Tuttle
Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is a periodic comet with an unusually large nucleus about 26 km (16 mi) across, orbiting the Sun roughly every 133 years. Each August, Earth plows through the debris trail it has shed over millennia, producing the Perseid meteor shower — a link first established by Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1865. After its 1862 discovery it was recovered in 1992 by Tsuruhiko Kiuchi and is due to return to perihelion in 2126, when it should become a bright naked-eye comet.
- Designation
- 109P/Swift-Tuttle
- Type
- Short-period
- Orbital period
- 133 years
- Discovery
- Independently discovered by Lewis Swift (16 July 1862) and Horace Parnell Tuttle (19 July 1862)
