How is the parent comet of the 2026 Perseid meteor shower classified by its orbital period?

The parent comet of the 2026 Perseid meteor shower is classified as a Halley-type comet.

Halley-type comets are generally defined by orbital periods between 20 and 200 years. Comet Swift–Tuttle takes roughly 133 years to orbit the Sun, placing it within that category rather than among short-period Jupiter-family comets.

Its elongated orbit carries it from a perihelion just inside Earth’s orbital distance to an aphelion beyond the orbit of Pluto. As the comet travels, sunlight and other processes release dust and rocky particles that remain distributed along its orbit. Earth crosses part of that debris stream every August, producing the Perseid meteor shower.

The label is sometimes confused with “periodic comet,” which is a broader description for a comet observed to return. Swift–Tuttle is both a periodic comet and a Halley-type comet. It is also in a 1:11 orbital resonance with Jupiter, meaning it completes approximately one orbit for every eleven Jupiter orbits.