Astrogruppe Cusanusgymnasium Bruneck

 tl;dr - One week ago, two students of the astronomy group joined a virtual sightseeing tour through the vernal sky, led by their teacher Christof Wiedemair. With the remotely controlled camera and telescope of 'torretta observatory' the three eagerly jumped from one celestial gem to the next, taking pictures and discussing the physics behind the various objects. We, beyond any doubt, live in a beautiful part of the world. However, when it comes to observational astronomy it all boils down to three key factors: a clear sky, steady air and no light pollution. Unfortunately, from that point of view the heart of the Alps is not a privileged spot at all. While light pollution is still okay though worsening, the god of weather often puts on a ruthless show here in South Tyrol, especially in spring time. Usually, from March to May there is little hope to get hold of a decent night. As soon as the capricious spring rains cease, wind arises and when it after days finally tails off the

 tl;dr - Evi Lerchner (4aR) has recently used the telescope of the 'torretta' observatory to hunt down the bright asteroid '18 Melpomene'. By chance there happened to be three more asteroids in the same field. One enigmatic body was less than 17 mag bright. There are almost 800,000 known asteroids in our solar system. Most of them have very cryptic names like  the Earth's trojan asteroid 2010 TK 7 , or the recently discovered near Earth binary asteroid 2020 BX 12 . On the other hand, 22,000 of the bigger ones have quite common names. They are named after gods, scientists, musicians, artists or just ordinary people. So roaming above your heads you can find Curie , Freddiemercury , Monty Python , James Bond or even Mr. Spock .  Last winter Evi Lerchner (4aR) took part in a challenge proposed by our school's library. The task was to thoroughly inspect an endless long list of asteroid names and extract all of the bodies that were named after writers, dead or alive.