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Planet orbiting a star in a binary system in the constellation of Sculptor
WASP-8b is an exoplanet orbiting the star WASP-8A in the constellation of Sculptor. The star is similar to the Sun and forms a binary star with a red dwarf star (WASP-8B) of half the Sun's mass that orbits WASP-8A 4.5 arcseconds away. The system is 294 light-years (90 parsecs) away and is therefore located closer to Earth than many other star systems that are known to feature planets similar to WASP-8b. The planet and its parent star were discovered in the SuperWASP batch -6b to -15b. On 1 April 2008, Dr. Don Pollacco of Queen's University Belfast announced them at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2008).
Orbit
The planet orbits WASP-8A at an average distance of just 0.08 AU (12,000,000 km) and a year passes in slightly more than 8.1 days on WASP-8b, which is somewhat farther from its parent star than other hot Jupiter planets. However, WASP-8b's orbit also has a relatively high eccentricity of 0.3, which, at periastron, brings it as close to its star as said similar planets are.
One thing that stands out extremely about WASP-8b is its orbit-spin angle to its star of 123°+3.4° −4.4°: This implies that the planet actually orbits retrograde to the spin of the parent star.
Physical characteristics
WASP-8b belongs to a class of extrasolar planets known as hot Jupiters and has a mass about 2.2 times and a radius slightly bigger than that of the planet Jupiter. Its density is about 1.737 g/cm; this implies that, unlike similar close-orbiting gas giants, the planet is actually denser than Jupiter (which has a density of 1.326 g/cm).
Owing to its close distance to its star, WASP-8b is extremely hot: Its measured dayside temperature is 1,552 K (1,279 °C), this is even hotter than its equilibrium temperature of 947 K (674 °C).
Albrecht, Simon; Winn, Joshua N.; Johnson, John A.; Howard, Andrew W.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Butler, R. Paul; Arriagada, Pamela; Crane, Jeffrey D.; Shectman, Stephen A.; Thompson, Ian B.; Hirano, Teruyuki; Bakos, Gaspar; Hartman, Joel D. (2012), "Obliquities of Hot Jupiter Host Stars: Evidence for Tidal Interactions and Primordial Misalignments", The Astrophysical Journal, 757 (1): 18, arXiv:1206.6105, Bibcode:2012ApJ...757...18A, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/757/1/18, S2CID17174530
Size comparison of WASP-8b with Jupiter.
Media related to WASP-8b at Wikimedia Commons
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