  The study presents a simplified method to identify potential bright red nova
progenitors based on the amplitude of the light curve and infrared (J-H) colour
of a contact binary system. We employ published criteria for contact binary
orbital instability to show that the amplitude of the light curve for a given
contact system with a low mass (< 1.4Msun) primary must be less than a
specified value for it to be potentially unstable. Using this we search the
photometric data of a large survey to identify about 50 potential bright red
nova progenitors. We analyse the survey photometry of each to determine the
mass ratio and from the estimated mass of the primary other physical parameters
of the systems. We show that each system has physical characteristics
indicating potential orbital instability. Using the absolute parameters from
our sample we model the expected instability separation and period for low mass
contact binary systems
