Astrogruppe Cusanusgymnasium Bruneck

 tl;dr - On the nights of December 10th, 13th, and 14th, 2025 we decided to target the small asteroid "Hossi", named after the German physicist and influencer Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder. Altogether, we collected 81 light frames with an exposure time of three minutes each along with the corresponding calibration frames. This allowed us to follow the asteroid's path over half a degree in the sky in the constellation Cetus. If you read the "Discovery Circumstances" section for the asteroid Hossi on the JPL Small Body Database browser you'll find:  "Sabine Karin Doris Hossenfelder (b. 1976), nicknamed “Hossi” in school, is a German physicist, philosopher of science, author, science communicator, musician, and singer. She has authored several books about fundamental physics, cosmology, and philosophy." Dr. Hossenfelder conducts her work as a science communicator mainly through her YouTube channel and thus some of the members of astrocusanus were famili...

 tl;dr - A teacher and two teenagers drive up to an observatory with a 16-inch telescope at 1,600 m in South Tyrol on a clear December night. The plan is to discover faint asteroids with the so-called “blink” method. Despite several obstacles, as a snowstorm of hotpixels and a merciless ski-slope light dome, they come away with ~  3x15 faint asteroids  (and one interesting variable star). Here’s the full story! On 28 December 2024 the sky was clad in a perfect winter blue, and two of my students — Emma (15) and Miriam (17) — despite being in the midst of winter holidays, agreed to an observing night at our school's rooftop roll-off observatory. Ready to hunt down asteroids. Our 16-inch RC telescope. The evening started promisingly: While we set up our equipment the air smelled cold and clear. Then however, the village below started their night-skiing and a gruesome light dome devoured all faint stars in the southeast. We had no other option but to postpone plan A (our ast...