The planet was announced orbiting the yellow main-sequence star[4] Pi Mensae in October 2001.

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 that have yet been observed.

Pi Mensae b has a very eccentric orbit and takes 5.72 years to revolve around the star.

[citation needed] In 2020, the true mass of Pi Mensae b was measured to be 14.1 MJ via astrometry.

[7] The most recent astrometric results as of 2022 have revised this mass estimate slightly downward, to 12.3 MJ.