All News (2011 - ...)

The German Astronomical Society honours Professor Frank Eisenhauer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), with the Instrument Development Award 2023 for his outstanding contributions to the development of innovative complex infrared instruments for ground-based large telescopes. more

Euclid, ESA’s newest space telescope with strong German participation, has delivered its first test images a few weeks after the rocket launch. more

The ESA space telescope Euclid, with significant contributions by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, was launched into space today, 1 July 2023 at 17:12 CEST on a Falcon 9 rocket by the US space company SpaceX. Once it arrives at its destination, the Lagrange Point 2 (L2) of Earth-Sun system, it will observe over a third of the entire sky for at least six years, mapping the spatial distribution of billions of galaxies and measuring their properties. Analysing this data, the six German institutes in the international Euclid consortium hope understand better, how Dark Matter and Dark Energy influence the structure of the universe. more

The astrophysicist Frank Eisenhauer builds sophisticated instruments for the world’s largest telescopes and uses them to explore black holes and distant galaxies with unprecedented precision. more

Researchers have observed the X-ray emission of the most luminous quasar seen in the last 9 billion years of cosmic history. Significant changes in the quasar’s emission give a new perspective on the inner workings of quasars and how they interact with their environment. The study was led by Dr Elias Kammoun, a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), and Zsofi Igo, a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). more

MICADO, the first light camera for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), has entered a new phase in the project: moving on from the design phase, the MICADO consortium partners have started to manufacture the various sub-systems of the instrument. On that occasion, ESO - together with the MICADO consortium - have produced the first of a collection of explainer videos. more

Astronomers excited by first JWST spectra of planetary cradles showing a rich and diverse chemistry more

Lightweight flexible mirrors could be rolled up during launch and precisely reshaped after deployment
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MPE founding director Reimar Lüst would celebrate his 100^th birthday this year. more

A white dwarf star can explode as a supernova when its mass exceeds the limit of about 1.4 solar masses. A team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has now found a binary star system in which matter flows onto the white dwarf from its companion. The system was found due to bright, so-called super-soft X-rays, which originate in the nuclear fusion of the overflowed gas near the surface of the white dwarf. The unusual thing about this source is that it is helium and not hydrogen that overflows and burns. The measured luminosity suggests that the mass of the white dwarf is growing more slowly than previously thought possible, which may help to understand the number of supernovae caused by exploding white dwarfs. more

Liquid water is one of the most important ingredients for the emergence of life as we know it on Earth. Researchers of the ORIGINS Cluster and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics from the fields of astrophysics, astrochemistry and biochemistry have now determined the necessary properties that allow moons around free-floating planets to retain liquid water for a sufficiently long time and thus enable life. more

Shortly before being shipped to the rocket launch, the Euclid project team took a last look at the impressive satellite that will soon map the distribution of galaxies in space more precisely than ever before. more