Astrogruppe Cusanusgymnasium Bruneck

Dear Universe, you have quite a lot of asteroids strolling about in the outer regions of our Solar System. One of them, the big one with almost 600 km of diameter and an orbital period of about 400 years, the one we call by the odd name 2002 TC302 , that's the reason we are writing you today. Well, this asteroid recently caught the attention of us earthlings, since on 11 November 2021 it is going to occult the 11.7 mag dim star  UCAC4 616-007599 - odd name, too, we know and we swear we had nothing to do with that. However,  the roaming rock will cast its 600 km wide shadow on our home planet Earth and everyone who happens to stand in the right spot, will see the star suddenly vanish for up to 21 seconds.  Sorry, we forgot to duly introduce ourselves: We are four members of the students astronomy group 'astrocusanus' and some of your biggest fans. You probably hear that often, but believe us, this is not the usual 'kiss the Universe's ass' stuff. No, we are the ...

 tl;dr - On the evening of 27 October 2021 we observed the transit of the exoplanet Qatar 4b in front of its host star. The magnitude drop amounted to about 2% and was clearly detected. This measurement is not only a valuable contribution to science, we also consider this a worthy 'first shadow' of our new telescope, which due to the Covid pandemic was left unused for painfully long months. The restrictions and curfews of the last one and a half years have sent our once lively students astronomy group into a quite extended doze. However, with most of the restrictions alleviated this autumn we were ready to give it a go once more. We were especially eager to finally test the capabilities of our new telescope in depth, first and foremost the increased light gathering power. The leap from 10 to 16 inch of primary mirror diameter promises a 60% deeper reach into the universe. While other proud owners of a new scope usually celebrate the start of the new and happy era with a so cal...