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Top 10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 12:13 pm ET
07 August 2002

6

Important note: Fact #6 has nothing to do with former presidents. That's still ahead.

Perseid meteoroids (and if you've been following along, you know these are things in space before they hit Earth's atmosphere) are anywhere from 60 to 100 miles apart, even at the densest part of the river of debris left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle. That river, in fact, is more like many streams, each deposited during a different pass of the comet on its 130-year orbit around the Sun. The material drifts through space and, in fact, orbits the Sun on roughly the same path as the comet while also spreading out over time.

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