Comet
The parent body of the annual Perseid meteor shower, with a nucleus larger than the object believed to have ended the dinosaurs.
| Type | Comet |
|---|---|
| Distance from the Sun | 26.09 AU |
| Diameter | 26 km |
| Mass | 5.50 × 10¹⁵ kg |
| Temperature | -218°C |
| Orbital period | 48,679 days |
| Rotation period | 67.2 hours |
| Apparent magnitude | 4.5 |
| Redshift | 0 |
| Discovered | 1862 |
Comets are icy bodies that vaporise as they near the Sun, and it's that boiling-off gas and dust, not the comet itself, that forms the tail.
At 26 km across, Comet Swift-Tuttle is 0.2 percent of the diameter of Earth.
Its mass is less than a thousandth of the mass of Earth.
It keeps an average distance of 26.09 AU from the Sun, so sunlight takes 3.6 hours to reach it.
A single orbit takes 133 years.
An average temperature of 55 K works out at -218 degrees Celsius, colder than the 15 degrees Earth averages.
It has been on record since 1862.
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