Heavily binned light curves of α Cir folded with the finally adopted rotation period sorted by their observing epoch. Solid lines correspond to fits with Eq. (1) and the vertical dashed lines indicate the measured phase of the light minima. The datasets are sorted by their observing year and correspond from top to bottom to the WIRE 2000, 2005, and 2006 data, SMEI, BRITE 2014 and 2016 data, TESS 2019, BRITE 2021, TESS 2021, and the TESS 2023 data.