Image courtesy of NASA.
All planets move around their stars in the same direction as the star spins'at least that's what we thought. But now ANU astronomer Dr Daniel Bayliss and his colleagues have found a planet that breaks the mould. Dr Bayliss, from the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is one of 16 early-career scientists unveiling their research to the public at Fresh Science - a national program sponsored by the Australian Government. Using one of the world's largest telescopes in Chile, Daniel and his collaborators discovered that a distant planet WASP-17b is moving in the opposite direction to the spin of the star around which it orbits. The discovery throws traditional theories about how planets form around stars into doubt. Planets form from the same disk of rotating material that gives birth to the star around which they move. So until now it has been assumed that any planets orbiting a star would be moving in the same direction as the star's spin.
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