Max-Planck-Institut
  für extraterrestrische Physik

Stanford University News
Nature original publication

J. Greiner

A. von Kienlin

Herschel views deep-space pearls on a cosmic string

Europe's new space observatory Herschel has delivered marvellous vistas of cold gas clouds lying near the plane of the Milky Way.
The dark, cool region is dotted with stellar factories, like pearls on a cosmic string, unveiling unexpected activity in spectacular details as we have never seen it before! These infrared pictures prove that Herschel is on par with the Hubble Space Telescope, complementing Hubble's view of the universe in visible light with the missing "other half" in the infrared.

Links:

ESA web release
ESA's Herschel web page

Looking deep into the Cat's Eye with Herschel/PACS
Herschel’s first glimpse into space

E. Sturm

Images: MPE

DLR and Roscosmos sign technical agreement for X-ray telescope eROSITA

With seven X-ray eyes the eROSITA telescope will scan the Universe for black holes and dark matter. Today board members of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Russian Federal Space agency Roscosmos signed an agreement which defines all organisational and technical conditions.

This contract gives the go-ahead to the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, which is responsible for the development and building of eROSITA.

	MPG press release (in German language)
	DLR press release (in German language)
	MPE project description
Contact person at MPE:     P. Predehl

The Cat's Eye nebula NGC6543 as seen by PACS

Looking deep into the Cat's Eye with Herschel/PACS

After the surprising success of the earlier “sneak preview” of the PACS photometer – a spectacular far-infrared colour image of the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 – the first light observation of the spectrometer part of the instrument was carried out on June 23.
Already, these very first data fulfill the expectations of the PACS-Team at MPE at this point and are of unprecedented sensitivity. "A lot of excitement is ahead of us"!   [  more ]

Living Fossils Hold Record of "Supermassive" Kick -
Star clusters point to black holes ejected from host galaxies

When two galaxies and the supermassive black holes in their centres merge, the resulting recoil can catapult the black hole from the galaxy. Scientists of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), MPE and Johns Hopkins University have now found that the stellar clusters around these black holes show very unusual properties and so open up a new possibility to study the event in detail. The stars around evicted black holes orbit at a very high velocity, because only stars orbiting faster than the kick velocity remain attached to the black hole after the kick. As a kind of living fossils of a distant epoch they can shed light on the turbulent past of merging galaxies in nearby clusters.

RIT Press Release

Original paper

MPE Research Result as Title Page of the Journal
Physical Review Letters

The title of the journal Physical Review Letters of 26 June 2009 shows an experiment which was conducted in the Complex Plasma Group of the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics: A microparticle drop is shown which forms in a complex plasma - an ionised gas into which small charged plastic particles are introduced. Under specific conditions new phenomena occur in these systems: Blobs like the one shown on the title form, and also bubbles form and explode upwards into the void. Another phenomenon are peaks which form on the lower brink in the particle cloud and face upwards. These cones remind of so-called Taylor cones, which form in fluids under the influence of an electrical field and surface tension.

News page of the MPE Theory group
    

"On the Cover" - Physical Review Letters

Herschel's first glimpse of the Universe

The PACS team at MPE is all excited: After the successful opening of the satellite's cryostat lid on Sunday, June 14, the instruments on board had their first view of the Universe. Against all odds, the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) was immediately able to capture some images, which far exceeded all our expectations. They already demonstrated - at this early phase of the mission - the superiority of Herschel, the largest infrared space telescope. [  more ]

MPG Press Release
    

ESA's Herschel web site

Image: Tim Jones/UT-Austin nach K. Cordes & S. Brown (STScI)

MPE Astronomer Finds Most Massive Black Hole in the Nearby Galaxy M87

Astronomers Jens Thomas (MPE) and Karl Gebhardt (University of Texas) use new computer modeling techniques to discover that the black hole at the heart of M87, one the largest nearby giant galaxies, is two to three times more massive than previously thought. Weighing in at 6.4 billion times the Sun's mass, it is the most massive black hole yet measured with a robust technique, and suggests that the accepted black hole masses in nearby large galaxies may be off by similar amounts. This has consequences for theories of how galaxies form and grow, and might even solve a long-standing astronomical paradox. [  more (in German language) ]

Press Release of the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas (Austin)

Preprint in astro-ph (#0906.1492)

Image: Chris Mihos, Case Western Reserve University / ESO

M 87: The End of a Giant Galaxy's Light and the Transition to Intergalactic Stars

Astronomers of MPE and ESO have probed the edge of the giant galaxy Messier 87 for the first time, and found that the stars beyond its edge are all intergalactic. The scientists believe that the outer parts of M 87 are missing because of still-not-understood effects during the formation of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. [  more (in German language) ]

Original paper in astro-ph

ESO press release

Copyright: MPE, Garching, Germany; CEA, Saclay, France

Herschel Space Observatory successfully launched

On 14 May Herschel, the largest space telescope ever, has been sent into space aboard an Ariane 5 launcher. For the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany, this event crowns more than ten years spent designing and building one of the three instruments aboard the satellite: PACS (Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer) was built by the MPE in cooperation with partners from six European countries. Including the operation of the Instrument Control Centre during the mission, the PACS project has cost the countries nearly 100 million euros.

MPE pre-launch release, 8 May 2009

Herschel satellite in orbit

Artist's view by D. Ducros, ESA, 2009

Looking into the Nursery of Stars

After ten years of developing and building Herschel, the ESA mission will start into space on the 14th of May. In 1.5 million kilometres distance from earth the space probe will orbit the sun for 3½ years. With its three instruments it will especially detect and analyse infrared radiation, which contains information on a wide range of phenomena like the evolution of distant galaxies and the existence of water in our solar system. Two of the three instruments on board have been developed or co-developed by the Max Planck Institutes for extraterrestrial Physics, Astronomy, Radio Astronomy and Solar System Research. [  more ]

MPG press release

In this picture the afterglow of GRB090423 is the red object shining only in some of the used color channels.

Image: GROND/MPE

Gamma-Ray Burst 090423 detected at a record distance

Following a Gamma-Ray burst alarm of the NASA Swift Satellite on April 23, several groups world-wide started searching for the afterglow emission. The MPE built  GROND instrument mounted at the MPI/ESO telesope at La Silla Observatory (Chile) observed this afterglow simultaneously in the spectral bands g'r'i'z'JHK about 15 hours after the burst. The simultaneous measurements in the seven spectral bands enabled scientists at MPE led by Jochen Greiner, to rapidly estimate the redshift of the burst to be around z = 8 which puts it into a new record distance. [  more ]

Image: MPE

Formation of S0 galaxies as common in groups as in clusters

MPE astrophysicist Dave Wilman has gained new insight into the formation of a special category of galaxies, the so-called S0 galaxies, which will influence studies of galaxies in general.
[  more ]

Image: MPE

PACS is ready for Launch

Engineers and scientists of the MPE, together with other colleagues from the PACS consortium, have thoroughly checked our instrument for the Herschel satellite one last time at the ESA spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana) and now signal to their colleagues in Garching:

green light - PACS is ready for launch!

Web pages of the PACS group at MPE

Herschel web pages at ESA

ROSAT colour coded image of the field of A3571. The X-ray transient is indicated with the pointer.

Image: MPE

A candidate tidal disruption event in the Galaxy cluster Abell 3571

The authors of the paper, several from MPE, serendipitously detected with ROSAT an X-ray source that is strongly declining in luminosity, in the galaxy cluster A3571. The period of decay is of about 13 years, and the source was identified as a member of the cluster. This event is consistent with a tidal disruption of a star by a black hole of 10⁷ solar masses. Since the black hole only accretes a small amount of mass, the observed event must correspond to a partial or explosive disruption of the star.

This paper was selected as an A&A Highlight by the Editors of Astronomy & Astrophysics, who are trying to attract the readers' attention to some works in the current issue that they find particularly exciting and/or intriguing for those outside the speciality.

Original article in
Astron. & Astrophys. 495, 523-535 (2009)

More information can be provided by the author Nico Cappelluti

31.7 hours after GRB 080916C exploded, the MPE Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND), began acquiring images of the blast's fading afterglow (circled).

Image: MPE / GROND

NASA'S FERMI TELESCOPE SEES MOST EXTREME GAMMA-RAY BLAST YET

The first gamma-ray burst to be seen with substantial GeV emission from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen. [  more ]

	Fermi / NASA press release
The Fermi team's results were first published on February 19, 2009 in the online edition of the journal Science.
	Original article in Science Express
The GROND results will be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
	GROND results preprint

The MPE parable flight team.

Image: MPE

Parable Flights in Bordeaux

At a three-day parable flight campaign in Bordeaux, the MPE group Theory and Complex Plasmas carried out the experiment "Fast PK-3 Plus", which is supposed to complement the tests on the International Space Station (ISS): With the aid of a new data entry system, which is able to record up to 1000 pictures per second, very fast effects in complex plasmas can be studied. [  more ]

	Web pages of the theory group at MPE
	Blog on parable flight (in German language)

The elliptical galaxies NGC 4649 (left) and NGC 4621 (right) in the Virgo galaxy cluster. These two galaxies belong to the sample of galaxies that Kormendy and Bender investigated.

Image: courtesy of Sloan Digital Sky Survey/WIKISKY

Astronomers Discover Link Between Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxy Formation

A pair of astronomers from Texas and Germany have used a telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory together with the Hubble Space Telescope and many other telescopes around the world to uncover new evidence that the largest, most massive galaxies in the universe and the supermassive black holes at their hearts grew together over time.

	MPE press release
	MPE Highlights

10th Mission PK-3 Plus successfully completed

Exactly three years after the start of the operational phase of PK-3 Plus aboard the International Space Station (ISS) the 10th mission was successfully completed with another three experiments. The plasma laboratory PK-3 Plus, operated by the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics and Russian institutions, is the second facility of this kind aboard the ISS. It continues the successful story of the previous plasma laboratory PKE-Nefedov, the first science experiment aboard ISS and the most successful one in the history of the space station. Just as its predecessor it provides an insight into complex plasma. In complex plasma the properties of so-called plasma crystals and fluids can be studied on the most fundamental level, the kinetic one. This time experiments (each of 90 minutes) of crystallisation, "string fluids" and "bubbles" inside a thermophoretic complex plasma were on the list.
On the occasion of the 10th mission a logo was designed, for use on stickers, T-shirts and cups, which after successful completion of the experiments were inaugurated immediately at a party in Korolyov (Moscow) near the Russian control centre.
At the end of the year the operational phase of PK-3 Plus was supposed to end, however the facility still works perfectly. That is why the Russians strive for continuation, and MPE totally agrees. So many other exciting missions can be expected.

	Plasma Crystal pages at MPE
	Blog on Plasmakristall (in German language)