Newfound planet orbits backward

By doris | Published: August 12, 2009

Full Story at msnbc.com

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.
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“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.

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