Tumbling hometown - An asteroid's lightcurve
tl;dr - Maximilian Komar, 'senior member' of our students astronomy group, determined the rotational period of the main belt asteroid '11538 Brunico' during his internship at 'Planetarium Südtirol'. He worked on data collected in September 2020 by his teacher Christof Wiedemair in the school's observatory and after two weeks of analysis he nailed down the result: the distant rock spins with a period of 9.5 hours. Sadly, the next opportunity to monitor Bruneck in detail will only be in 2027, when the asteroid will again be close enough to bring it into reach of our telescope. Bruneck is not only the most beautiful and picturesque town in the vicinity of the 'astrocusanus observatory' (It is the only town in the vicinity and the hometown of Astrocusanus 😉) but also the German name of the asteroid 11538 Brunico, named so in 2011 in recognition of our ongoing collaboration with Christiaan Sterken from Brussels University. After our leap in telesco