toastywombel Posted April 14, 2010 Posted April 14, 2010 A bevy of backward-orbiting exoplanets could challenge theories of planet formation, new research suggests. The planets’ wonky orbits might also rule out the presence of Earthlike bodies in some planetary systems. http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58275/title/Backward_planets_may_have_flipped_into_place I read through and I though interesting article. Maybe systems like this are more common than we previously thought. I wanted to find out some more about the individual systems, specifically how far some of these systems were from Earth. So I followed the link to the other article in the third paragraph down, that further explained the information gathered on extra solar planets. http://www.sciencenews.org/index/generic/activity/view/id/46658/title/Extrasolar_planets_at_full_tilt There I found a few of the names of the extra solar planets COROT-Exo-1b COROT-1b[2] (previously named COROT-Exo-1b)[1] is an extrasolar planet approximately 1,560 light-years away in the constellation of Monoceros. The planet was discovered orbiting the yellow dwarf star COROT-1 in May 2007. The planet was the first discovery by the French-led COROT Mission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COROT-1b WASP-17b WASP-17b is an exoplanet orbiting the star WASP-17 whose discovery was announced on 11 August 2009.[2] It is the first planet discovered to have a retrograde orbit, meaning it orbits in a direction counter to the rotation of its host star.[2] In terms of diameter, WASP-17b may be the largest exoplanet discovered yet, and at half Jupiter's mass, this would make it the most diffuse known planet, making it a puffy planet. A team of researchers led by David Anderson of Keele University in Staffordshire, England discovered the gas giant, which is about 1,000 light years (300 parsecs) from Earth, by observing it transit its host star WASP-17. Such photometric observations also reveal the planet's size. The discovery was made with a telescope array at the South African Astronomical Observatory. Due to the involvement of the Wide Angle Search for Planets SuperWASP consortium of universities, the exoplanet, as the 17th found to date by this group, was given its present name.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASP-17b HAT-P-7b I couldn't find the distance the planet is form earth on wikipedia, but I found out it is also referred to as the kepler-2b. So after looking that up on the Kepler mission website which gave me, Distance parsecs 320 http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/kepler2b/ 1 parsec= 3.26156 ly, So its about 1000 light years from earth. HD 80606b HD 80606 b is a superjovian planet (Eccentric Jupiter) 190 light-years distant in the constellation of Ursa Major. The planet was discovered orbiting the star HD 80606 in April 2001 by a team led by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. Based on its mass, at 4 times that of Jupiter, it is a gas giant. Since the planet transits its star, its radius is determined to be slightly smaller than Jupiter's. Its density is slightly less than Earth's.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_80606_b Just some interesting information to look at all at once.
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