高精度視線速度系外惑星探査装置
The planet's discovery was announced on August 25, 2004. At the time, its minimum mass was reported at just 14 times that of Earth, although later work established a value of 10.5 Earth masses. It orbits very close to Mu Arae, completing one revolution every 9.6 days. The discovery was made with the aid of the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph, at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The data that revealed the presence of this planet was gathered on 8 nights of observations in June 2004.