MPE Press Releases (2005 - ...)

Today, the Royal Astronomical Society announced that the 2022 Jackson-Gwilt Medal is awarded to Frank Eisenhauer, senior staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. In the Infrared group there, Frank Eisenhauer has pioneered instrumentation for adaptive optics, integral-field spectroscopy, and optical/infrared interferometry. In particular, he has led the development of two instruments that have been crucial to the discovery and characterization of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy: SINFONI and, most recently, GRAVITY. more

Great honour for Frank Eisenhauer: the General Assembly of the Académie des sciences, the Paris Academy of Sciences, has elected Frank Eisenhauer, scientist in the infrared group at MPE, as a foreign member. If the corona situation permits at this time, the official admission is to take place on 14 June 2022 in a formal ceremony in Paris. more

GRAVITY zooms in on stars around the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way more

Astronomers obtain the deepest and sharpest images to date of the region around the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way more

The German Physical Society (DPG) awards the Stern-Gerlach Medal, the DPG's highest award for excellent achievements in experimental physics, to Frank Eisenhauer of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). Frank Eisenhauer is honoured for his "pioneering work in high-resolution infrared astronomy, which has revolutionized spectroscopic as well as astrometric studies." more

Former MPE Director, Professor Klaus Pinkau, passed away in October in a Munich hospital at the age of 90. more

In September, the payload module for the Euclid space telescope passed its final tests and is now ready for integration with the service module. Together with the Euclid telescope, the two instruments VIS and NISP, whose optics were developed and constructed at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, delivered sharp images after a simulated rocket launch. The Euclid mission is scheduled to launch into space in 2022 to study the “dark universe”. more