SIMBAD references

More than 40 planets have been found around giant stars, revealing a lack of systems orbiting interior to ∼0.6AU. This observational fact contrasts with the planetary population around solar-type stars and has been interpreted as the result of the orbital evolution of planets through the interaction with the host star and/or because of a different formation/migration scenario of planets around more massive stars. We are conducting a radial velocity study of a sample of 166 giant stars aimed at studying the population of close-in planets orbiting post-main sequence stars. We computed precision radial velocities from multi-epoch spectroscopic data to search for planets around giant stars. We present the discovery of a massive planet around the intermediate-mass giant star HIP63242. The best Keplerian fit to the data leads to an orbital distance of 0.57AU, an eccentricity of 0.23 and a projected mass of 9.2M_J. HIP63242b is the innermost planet detected around any intermediate-mass giant star and also the first planet detected in our survey.