page_title: Perseids
section_title: Characteristics
hierarchical_section_title: Perseids / Characteristics
caption_attribution_description: English: A near-Earth perspective of its orbit (red), the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower, and the orbit of the shower’s parent comet, 109P/Swift-Tuttle, to show their spatial relationships on August 12 00:00 UTC. The Perseid meteor shower is fairly wide (~0.1 AU), filling the frame. Note: the bend in the Earth’s orbit is due to projection distortion.
context_page_description: The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle. The meteors are called the Perseids because the point from which they appear to hail lies in the constellation Perseus.
context_section_description: The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift–Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 133-year orbit. Most of the particles have been part of the cloud for around a thousand years. However, there is also a relatively young filament of dust in the stream that was pulled off the comet in 1865, which can give an early mini-peak the day before the maximum shower. The dimensions of the cloud in the vicinity of the Earth are estimated to be approximately 0.1 astronomical units (AU) across and 0.8 AU along the Earth's orbit, spread out by annual interactions with the Earth's gravity.
  The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the peak in activity between 9 and 14 August, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky; however, because of the shower's radiant in the constellation of Perseus, the Perseids are primarily visible in the Northern Hemisphere. As with many meteor showers the visible rate is greatest in the pre-dawn hours, since more meteoroids are scooped up by the side of the Earth moving forward into the stream, corresponding to local times between midnight and noon, as can be seen in the accompanying diagram. While many meteors arrive between dawn and noon, they are usually not visible due to daylight. Some can also be seen before midnight, often grazing the Earth's atmosphere to produce long bright trails and sometimes fireballs. Most Perseids burn up in the atmosphere while at heights above 80 kilometres (50 mi).
caption: A near-Earth perspective of its orbit, the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower, and the orbit of the shower's parent comet, 109P/Swift-Tuttle, to show their spatial relationships on August 12 00:00 UTC. The Perseid debris cloud is fairly wide (~0.1 AU), filling the frame.
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