WASP 17 – New Planet?

Written by Jay on August 16, 2009 – -

wasp-17

Well, if you have no idea what WASP 17 is, it’s the latest discovery of a new planet. But besides being the newest planet to be discovered, it is also the biggest one to be discovered. And it gets even better, it also orbits backwards which is another first.

WASP-17 is the discovery of a group of British universities, the Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP). The team of scientists track hundreds of thousands of stars and cosmos patterns. Planets that pass in front of those lights sources make them detectable.

WASP 17 is twice the size of Jupiter and orbits a star about 1000 light years away from Earth.

I couldn’t find any screenshots of what scientists see when they discovered WASP 17 but if I find any, I’ll make sure to post them on here.


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