Dear Tom,
I saw the beautiful Perseids meteor shower on Aug. 11, but I am told those were comets, not asteroids. Is this true?
S. Smalley
Dear S. Smalley,
You were seeing debris from the Swift-Tuttle Comet. Contrary to popular belief, the spectacular display of a meteor shower is attributed to comets, not asteroids.
When the Earth passes through the tail of a comet, individual flashes of light (sometimes hundreds per hour) occur when rocky debris in the tail heats to incandescence in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Asteroids, rocky objects in orbit around the sun, are “loners.” An asteroid will produce only a single fireball if it plunges into the atmosphere. The Earth’s annual passage (in mid-August) through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle Comet is the source of the Perseids meteor shower.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
