Just a day after the first discovery of a planet with an orbit that goes in the direction opposite to the spin of its star – a gas giant WASP-17b – a second such planet has been reported.

Two teams of scientists, one led by Joshua Winn of MIT and another by Norio Narita at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, picked out a previously known planet HAT-P-7b, that is, like WASP-17b, around 1000 light years away from Earth. It also orbits its star in the direction opposite to star’s own rotation. Both teams have submitted papers for peer review but have not yet been accepted. [New Scientist].

Winn avoided the temptation to make any “you wait ages for a retrograde orbit planet and then two come along at once” comments, instead observing that the coincidence of discoveries was “funny”.

“We’re catching so many planets these days, we’re bound to see some of the oddballs. These aren’t going to be the last ones,” Adam Burrows of Princeton University told New Scientist.

Posted for Mico Tatalovic