Introduction.

For some years until the beginning of 1986, a visual search for bright supernovae was conducted by the author from various locations with a second-grade quality 25 cm telescope. Twelve supernovae were eventually found with this telescope, and several others were observed that had been found first by others. Since that time, the search has been continued using a 41 cm telescope. Sixteen supernovae have been discovered with the 41 cm telescope, and about the same number of other supernovae have been observed with it. The ratio of those discovered to those merely observed has changed because the competition for discoveries has become greater in recent years.

Since 1986, part of the competition has been in the form of professional computerised automated searches using CCDs which have been conducted with larger telescopes, in particular, a 76 cm telescope at Berkeley, and now a 61 cm telescope at Perth. Several small-scale operations at other locations have also come into existence recently. At the Christchurch meeting of the Astronomical Society of Australia in 1993 I presented a paper which tried to compare the results of the Berkeley automated search from 1986 to mid-1991 (Muller et al. 1992) with my 41 cm search over the same period. A total of twenty supernovae were seen at Berkeley compared to seventeen seen from my home (Evans 1994). A difference of only three supernovae in the two searches over a period of nearly six years raised the possibility that, if a visual search had been conducted with a telescope like the one used at Berkeley, and assuming that the same amount of telescope time was available which the Berkeley team enjoyed, perhaps similar results might have been obtained by the visual search, or it might have been even more fruitful.

In order to test these ideas, a funding proposal through the Australian Research Council was launched in 1994 for a dedicated 1 m telescope in Australia, but this was not successful. This was followed by applications for observing time on the 40 inch telescope at Siding Spring. The Director of Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, Prof. Jeremy Mould, and the Time Allocation Committee have supported this plan even though there is steady professional competition for use of the telescope. This support was particularly noteworthy because the search was visual and did not use the regular CCD equipment. It was also totally staffed by amateur astronomers.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997