A planet in A 0.6 AU orbit around the K0 giant HD 102272

We report the discovery of one or more planet-mass companions to the K0-giant HD 102272 with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. In the absence of any correlation of the observed periodicities with the standard indicators of stellar activity, the observed radial velocity variations are most plausibly explained in terms of a Keplerian motion of at least one planet-mass body around the star. With an estimated stellar mass of 1.9 M, the minimum mass of the confirmed planet is 5.9 M_J . The planet's orbit is characterized by a small but nonzero eccentricity e = 0.05 and a semimajor axis of 0.61 AU, which makes it the most compact planet discovered so far around GK spectral type giants. This detection adds to the existing evidence that, as predicted by theory, the minimum size of planetary orbits around intermediate-mass giants is affected by both planet-formation processes and stellar evolution. The currently available evidence of another planet around HD 102272 is insufficient to obtain an unambiguous two-orbit solution.