Hattrick

 tl;dr: astrocusanus has won the Reiff Prize for school astronomy for the third time (after 2011 and 2019). We’re speechless and very grateful. The prize money goes into a beast of a computer for our next challenge: catching tiny flashes of meteorites crashing into the Moon.

Some news we have been looking eager to share: astrocusanus has won the Reiff Prize for Amateur and School Astronomy! The Reiff Foundation honours outstanding projects in amateur and school astronomy, and we are thrilled that our recent application convinced the jury.

And yes, you got that right: after 2011 and 2019, this is the third time our group received an award from the Reiff Foundation. If you want to know more about the prize, check out the official website.

From left: Valentina, Romina, Miriam and Jakob at our observatory

Quick flashback: astrocusanus started back in 2006, so we’ve been around for more than 20 years now. Generations of students between 14 and 19 have spent cold nights, long evenings and many hours in front of screens with us. The result of this long journey together:

• We measured the speed of light using the star CY Aquarii (2008)
• We built our own school observatory at 1600 m
• We’ve published seven (!) scientific papers on CY Aquarii with Prof. Christiaan Sterken, and measured that star’s brightness about 66,000 (!) times since 2008
• We won the competition “Junge Forscher gesucht” in 2014 and 2018
• We got an asteroid named “Brunico” after our hometown, and worked out its rotation period ourselves
• We put our own astrophotos on display at the local hospital twice
• We bought a 16-inch telescope thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign
• We hunted asteroids with the old-school blink method, followed asteroid Hossi, hopped through galaxies, recorded several exoplanet transits and took spectra of comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
• We built an alumni network that now includes real physicists and astrophysicists with papers in Nature and (maybe soon) Nature Astronomy. We’re proud of them!

A huge thank you to the Reiff Foundation and the jury for believing in us once again. Thanks also to our school, our sponsors, our partners and all the former members who still cheer us on.

So, what’s next? We’re going to hunt for meteoroid impact flashes on the Moon. ☄️🌙

Moon with earthshine and the star Aldebaran.
A meteorite impact on the dark side would produce a short burst of light.

When a space rock slams into the lunar surface, it makes a tiny flash of light. With a fast camera, a good telescope and lots of patience, you can catch these events on the Moon’s dark side. The idea took off after a Falcon 9 rocket stage hit the Moon in August 2026, and it has been at the top of our to-do list ever since. The prize money will go into a powerful computer that runs the camera and analyses the video in real time, because a whole night of Moon footage at ~ 50 frames per second is a lot of data. Of course, we’ll document the whole adventure here on the blog: the wins, the fails and, fingers crossed, our very first impact flash.

Stay tuned! 🔭

Christof Wiedemair