The Brazilian Supernovae Search (BRASS) is the first non-professional systematic supernovae search program conducted in Latin America, and one of the very few existing in the whole Southern Hemisphere. BRASS was originally conceived back in 2001 by Brazilian amateur astronomers Cristóvão Jacques and Tasso Napoleão, both engineers with their background in astronomy and astrophysics acquired from local universities. Subsequently, two other amateur astronomers - Eduardo Pimentel and Carlos Colesanti - joined the BRASS team, which currently uses three observatories (one of them robotic) located in the Brazilian cities of Belo Horizonte and São Paulo. Results obtained so far, with seven supernovae discovered in the first full year of operation, were obtained through a strong teamwork by all BRASS members.

The planning phase of the program, as well as hardware and software design and final setups, took about two years. While Jacques took care – with the help of Pimentel in Belo Horizonte and Colesanti in São Paulo – of all equipment and software needs for the search, Napoleão developed the optimized galaxies catalogs used for the BRASS project, taking into account astrophysical parameters which statistically define the rate of extragalactic supernovae.

The image library for the search was built in 2002 – 2003 at the observatories located in our country, as well as at a third one we rented in Northern Chile, close to Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatories. (Unfortunately, unlike Chile, Brazil has a very hot and wet climate – far from ideal to astronomical observations !).

Actual search was started in Brazil by mid-2004 and was boosted by the robotization of the CEAMIG-REA Belo Horizonte observatory in September. Up to May 2005, seven supernovae had been discovered by BRASS project, all validated by the International Astronomy Union.

The Southern Hemisphere offers a wide potential for supernovae search. Our estimates indicate that some 10 to 15 supernovae per annum are missed due to lack of adequate coverage of the Southern skies, taking our limiting magnitude of 17 as guideline. We are preparing to help fill this gap: a second version of our galaxy catalog has already been prepared and the new image library is underway now. We expect our rate of discovery to more than double after the second half of 2005, when this task should be completed.