Optical and near-infrared light curves of SN 2006au. Over-plotted as solid lines are light curves of SN 1987A (J and H from Bouchet et al. 1989; I from Hamuy et al. 1988; BgVr from spectrophotometry on the spectra sample published in Phillips et al. 1988) scaled to match the peak brightness of SN 2006au. We also show (stars) the unfiltered/r magnitudes from discovery and confirmation images (Trondal et al. 2006). The two objects have nearly identical evolution between −30 to +30 days past maximum. At earlier epochs SN 2006au shows evidence of the tail end of the cooling phase that followed shock break-out. At later epochs the B, V and r-band light curves of SN 2006au appear to drop at a faster rate.