Thousands of minor planets, known as asteroids, orbit our sun. Some of them come dangerously close to the Earth. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs is associated with the catastrophic impact of a large asteroid.

But how can we measure the distance of such chunks of iron and rock from the Earth? Abdurrahman M. from the high school Laurentianum in Warendorf/Germany tackled this question and successfully presented his results in the geosciences and spatial sciences category of the regional “Jugend forscht 2023” competition. In his work, he impressively demonstrates that he can remotely measure the respective distance with astonishing accuracy using the ten 40 cm telescopes of the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) distributed around the Earth from his hometown Warendorf. The guaranteed errors were less than 1%. Abdurrahman was able to put the statistics and vector algebra he had learned at school to good use and won 2nd place in this category.

The topic was no coincidence. In the astronomy project course, Abdurrahman, supported by physics teacher Tobias Schuldt, worked intensively on astronomical issues. In summer 2023, he took the opportunity to take part in the four-day STEM camp “Astronomy 2.0” organized by Astronomy and internet in Münster/Germany (AiM) and learned how to independently program robotic telescopes from any digital device as part of the Faulkes Telescope Project/Cardiff/UK (FTP). Here he also met Paul Breitenstein, the head of AiM, who always had an open ear for Abdurrahman’s questions and supported him tirelessly during the many weeks in which he devoted himself to his youth research topic.