Astrogruppe Cusanusgymnasium Bruneck

 tl;dr - Between the 25th October 2022 and the 7th November 2022, i.e. in a timespan of only two weeks, our astronomy group witnessed four eclipses.  Four? Ok, I can imagine your incredulous look, so let's be more specific: It weren't all solar eclipses, just three of them. Even more incredulous now? Stop furrowing your eyebrow and let me walk you through every single event. 25th October 2022: Partial solar eclipse over Bruneck The weather forecast for the day was good and so we had taken our preparations seriously. We were equipped with several solar eclipse goggles, a solar projector and a binocular with safety filters. By 11 a.m. we had set up a small stand outside the school building, ready to let as many of our fellow students as possible enjoy the show. However, a thick and grey layer of fog stubbornly claimed the lead role for itself. We had to play the waiting game for almost 1.5 hours ere we could eventually start with our observations. Nonetheless for the remaining 3...

 tl;dr - David Cont, who could very well be called a founding member of our astronomy group, is a lucky fellow. Last August he enjoyed a two-week observational stay at the monumental VLT observatory in Chile.  In 2008 the astronomy group of our school saw the light of the day. Actually it wasn't the light of the day, it was star light. And it wasn't any star, it was CY Aquarii, our up to the present favourite star in the entire universe (though there's a tight race between him and the sun going on). In a painstakingly laborious project we used the constant and remarkably short period of its brightness changes to derive the speed of light in vacuum, something Ole Römer had done about 300 years earlier. Back then (in 2008, not 300 years ago) David was one of the most dedicated team members and would stay one of the pillars of our group for the years to come. However, all good things come to an end and when David passed his final exam in 2010 the time to say farewell had com...