Abstract

On last May 22, we had a very unusual sighting in the southern skies, the outburst of a very bright nova in the constellation of Vela, not so far from the popular unique object h Carinae and also close to the Southern Cross. The nova named V382 Vel has reached up to magnitude 2.5 on May 22 being the brightest nova since Nova Puppis 1942, in the southern skies.

Southern hemisphere observers quickly detected the rapid increase of brightness. The Variable Star Section of the Latin American Astronomical League (LIADA) and Brazilian Observational Network REA from Brazil started a campaign, during the last 10 days of May and June, that allowed to cover all the development of the change in brightness.

The total number of observations for this paper was 591 from 44 observers and we have computed  61 daily means for measure the statistical quality of the data, during the main observing window for the star during 1999.

As results of this campaign we obtained a light curve with a standard error lesser than 0.05 magnitudes and two photographs taken before the discovery of the event.