Discovery of Comet Swift–Tuttle

Comet Swift-Tuttle is a large periodic comet discovered independently by the American astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. It takes about a hundred and thirty years to orbit the Sun, and it is the parent body of the Perseid meteor shower, which is seen every August when Earth passes through the stream of dust left behind by the comet. The connection was established by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli a few years after the discovery. The comet returned in 1992 after a long absence, and its next return is expected in the twenty-second century. Its nucleus is bigger than most comets, and its orbit crosses Earth's path, though calculations show that there is no risk of impact for thousands of years.

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