Detection of Solar-like oscillations in the G7 giant star ξ Hya

We report the firm discovery of solar-like oscillations in a giant star. We monitored the star xi Hya (G7III) continuously during one month with the CORALIE spectrograph attached to the 1.2 m Swiss Euler telescope. The 433 high-precision radial-velocity measurements clearly reveal multiple oscillation frequencies in the range 50-130 muHz, corresponding to periods between 2.0 and 5.5 hours. The amplitudes of the strongest modes are slightly smaller than 2 m s(-1). Current model calculations are compatible with the detected modes.