Getting SMARTS on novae: Highlights of the early evolution of Nova V475 Sct

There is a disconcerting global trend of retiring telescopes of modest aperture, supplanting them instead with fewer expensive telescopes of quite large aperture. As a consequence, the available time and feasibility of following transient objects in astrophysics is diminishing. We show the utility of having a suite of small to moderate aperture telescopes capable of conducting imaging and spectroscopic observations in a service queue mode. The example we provide is the high-cadence early observations of the classical nova V475 Scuti (2003) carried out with the SMARTS suite of telescopes located at CTIO.