On October 15, 2001, a team of astronomers including Jones, Butler, Tinney, Marcy, Penny, McCarthy, Carter, and Pourbaix announced the discovery of one of the most massive extrasolar planets have yet been observed. It was discovered by the Anglo-Australian Planet Search team, using a doppler spectrometer mounted on the Anglo-Australian Telescope.
Pi Mensae b orbits in a very eccentric orbit and takes 5.89 years to revolve around Pi Mensae. The semi-major axis of the planet to the star is 3.38 AU while the semi-minor axis is 2.59 AU. This planet passes through the star's habitable zone at periastron (1.21 AU) while at apastron, it passes to beyond Jupiter-Sun distance (5.54 AU). The gravitational influence of this planet would disrupt the orbit of any potentially Earth-like planet.
Pi Mensae b is over ten times more massive than Jupiter,[3] the most massive planet in our solar system. It will have 10 times the surface gravity of Jupiter alone and could be incadescent (glowing). The inclination of the orbit is not known, and this planet could be a brown dwarf instead.