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).

[5] 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.

[6][1][7] 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.