First results from the Anglo-Australian Planet Search: A brown dwarf candidate and a 51 peg-like planet

We report results from the Anglo-Australian Planet Search, a survey for planets around 200 solar-type stars in the southern hemisphere that is being carried out on the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope. Limiting Doppler precisions of 3 m s(-1) have been demonstrated from the first 2.5 years of operation, making this the highest-precision planet search in the southern hemisphere. From these data we report results for two new substellar detections. The first is a 51 Peg-like planet around the star HD 179949 with M sin i = 0.84 M-JUP. Photometric study reveals this is not a transiting system. The second is a brown dwarf or very low mass star companion to HD 164427 in an eccentric orbit with Msin i = 46 M-JUP. Hipparcos data indicate this latter object is unlikely to have a mass greater than 0.18 M..