Posted on 08/12/2009 8:31:39 AM PDT by posterchild
Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.
A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.
The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.
"I would have to say this is one of the strangest planets we know about," said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discovery.
What's going on A star forms when a cloud of gas and dust collapses. Whatever movement the cloud had becomes intensified as it condenses, determining the rotational direction of the star. How planets form is less certain. They are, however, known to develop out of the leftover, typically disk-shaped mass of gas and dust that swirls around a newborn star, so whatever direction that material is moving, which is the direction of the star's rotation, becomes the direction of the planet's orbit.
WASP-17 likely had a close encounter with a larger planet, and the gravitational interaction acted like a slingshot to put WASP-17 on its odd course, the astronomers figure.
"I think it's extremely exciting. It's fascinating that we can study orbits of planets so far away," Seager told SPACE.com. "There's always theory, but there's nothing like an observation to really prove it."
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
“A newfound planet orbits the wrong way”....
In the same fashion as the dingbat in the White House.....
Hmmm....
Perhaps they erred in determining the star rotation
Now we know the original birthplace of Bammy!
That’s probably where the devil lives. How else could it go the opposite direction?
A THOUSAND light years away from its star? How could they possibly detect it, and how did they decide it “belonged” to a star 1000 light years away? That’s the size of the Milky Way galaxy!!!
ACtually the Milky Way is more like 100,000 miles across.
Almost everything you can see with your naked eye is closer than that....Almost.
A planet going backwards. Let’s name it “Socialist”. Or is that racist?
100,000 light years (give or take)
Hehehe. I meant the chocolate bar?
Was it discovered by an Australian by chance?
ARGHGHGHGHGHGH.......................AHRHRHRHGHGH!!!!!
Stupid fingers...typing what I was thinking instead of what I ment!
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