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...

tl;dr - On 10 June 2021 several students of our school were (once more) able to witness a partial solar eclipse. Although the maximum coverage was of only four lousy percent it was a worthy astronomical finale for this school year. Those who missed the celestial spectacle this time will have to wait for more than one and a half years to get the next chance. On 20 March 2015 a partial solar eclipse was visible over Europe and the students astronomy group 'astrocusanus' tried their best to allow as many students as possible to witness the stunning event. Back then it was a great success and moreover a merry and informal gathering of members of our school community of all ages. So we obviously did not hesitate when sun and moon came to terms to deliver a similar show, right at the end of this school year. Now it has to be admitted that the two made a questionable choice in favoring the two handful of observers in Northern Greenland during their 2021 performance. But who are we to ...

 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....

tl;dr - Maximilian Komar, 'senior member' of our  students  astronomy group, determined the rotational period of the main belt asteroid '11538 Brunico'  during his internship at 'Planetarium Südtirol'. He worked on data collected in September 2020 by his teacher Christof Wiedemair in the school's observatory and after two weeks of analysis he nailed down the result: the distant rock spins with a period of 9.5 hours. Sadly, the next opportunity to monitor Bruneck in detail will only be in 2027, when the asteroid will again be close enough to bring it into reach of our telescope. Bruneck is not only the most beautiful and picturesque town in the vicinity of the 'astrocusanus observatory' (It is the only town in the vicinity and the hometown of Astrocusanus 😉) but also the German name of the asteroid 11538 Brunico, named so in 2011 in recognition of our ongoing collaboration with Christiaan Sterken from  Brussels  University.  After our leap in telesco...

 tl;dr -  Recently the astronomy students' group 'astrocusanus' has started remote imaging of various celestial objects using the observatory 'torretta' on the roof of our neighboring school IPC. Maximilian Komar laid his focus upon hydrogen clouds that emit most of their light in the deep red color. The highlights are shown here. As our faithful readers learned in our last blog article, our astronomy group sought and found a way to at least partially overcome the limitations imposed by the ongoing pandemic. We went remote! The refractor dwelling in the dome on the roof of our neighboring school 'Istituto pluricomprensivo di Brunico' may be small however, it does the trick. Along with a black and white CMOS cam from Starlight XPress it delivers free and sharp images straight to our junior astronomers' hard disks, where they then linger for further processing with the free software Siril. Recently Maximilian Komar, who is about to graduate from our school...