by Hannah Spieker and Lucie Besmehn

Ten students from five MINT-EC schools in Münster/Germany are happy about their participation in the discovery of four previously unknown “Near Earth Objects” (NEOs) after working with Paul Breitenstein (AiM project leader) and Dr. Tobias Jogler (astrophysicist and head of the Münster Planetarium). This work includes the discovery of an “Amor”-type asteroid 2020TX.

Hannah Spieker (grade 10) and Lucie Besmehn (grade 11) from the Nepomucenum high school in Coesfeld took part in the MINT-EC camp “Minor Planets”. MINT-EC is the national excellence network of schools with secondary level II and an excellent mathematical, scientific and technical school profile. Here is Hannah’s report:

From October 5th, 2020 to October 8th, 2020, Lucie from Q1 and I, Hannah from EF, were allowed to take part in the MINT-EC-Camp “Minor Planets” in the LWL Natural History Museum in Münster.

Right at the beginning of the workshop we got to know the large research telescopes in Siding Spring in Australia, which can also be remotely controlled by students via the Internet. With the one of the 0.4m reflectors we were able to take great pictures of various objects in our galaxy during the week. Lucie and I looked at the Eagle Nebula, a well-known example of an area where new stars are formed.

Image 1. RGB image of the Eagle Nebula (M16)

After that we went on an asteroid hunt! For this purpose, we assigned our own observation requests to the 2m Faulkes Telescope South in Siding Spring in order to take several images of possible asteroids. We then evaluated these images on our own laptops using the software “Astrometrica”. In fact, we were able to confirm the existence of three Near Earth Objects (NEOs for short) and to measure their orbital data.

Our measurement results can be viewed online in the publications of the Minor Planet Center, the official organization for the collection of data on minor planets: MPEC 2020-T40 (for the object 2020 TX), MPEC 2020-T45 (for 2020 TC1) and MPEC 2020-T87 (for 2020 TS2).

We were thus able to make a small contribution to current research. For example, NASA uses this data to track the trajectories of 2020 TX, 2020 TC1 and 2020 TS2.
Finally, a visit to the planetarium was on the program of the camp, during which it became clear to us once again what a tiny part we make up in the universe and how much is still to be discovered. In addition, Dr Jogler told us about his job as an astrophysicist and director of the planetarium in the natural history museum.

The camp was definitely a lot of fun, was very educational and a great opportunity to get an insight into research and scientific work.

Image 3. Award of the certificates with P. Breitenstein (center) and Dr T. Jogler (right)

See also:
https://www.nepomucenum.de/facher/astronomie/astronomie-aktuelles/mint-hannah-und-lucie-auf-asteroidenjagd/