The Challenge of the Search

But Pereira wasn't always so fortunate. He began hunting for novae in 1981 at age 18 but soon gave up because of the daunting difficulty of the task. He resumed his binocular searches six years later but did so only sporadically. It wasn't until 1991 that he started a program of "serious" hunting. And after 500 hours of searching, he was rewarded with his first nova. On December 1, 1999, while searching through an open window in his house, he found Nova Aquilae 1999 No. 2 (V1494 Aquilae) shining at about 6th magnitude. Within a day it had flared to magnitude 3.6.

"I caught [Nova Aquilae 1999 No. 2] just a few minutes after I had started another evening session. I had swept [Scutum], and raising the 14 x 100s [northeast] I scanned central Aquila where I go deep to magnitude 8.5. I had the intention of switching to 9 X 34s since these areas were higher in the sky, but then I saw a bright object that completely disturbed even the main 'skeleton' of my binocular patterns. . . . My heart pounded!"

Bright, naked-eye novae appear about once or twice per decade. Indeed, prior to Pereira's discovery of Nova Aquilae 1999 No.2, Peter Williams (Heathcote, New South Wales, Australia) and Alan C. Gilmore (Mount John University Observatory, New Zealand) independently discovered the brilliant Nova Velorum 1999 (V382 Velorum) high in the southern sky on the night of May 22, 1999. The new star was shining at 3rd magnitude when the two observers noticed it without optical aid; the star reached a maximum brightness of magnitude 2.6 the next day. The brightest naked-eye nova prior to Williams and Gilmore's find was Nova Cygni 1992 (V1974 Cygni), which achieved 4th magnitude in 1992; Peter Collins of Boulder, Colorado, discovered it visually at 7th magnitude.