CAS News and Highlights

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Hydrogen atmosphere could keep exomoons habitable for billions of years more

Astrophysicists Discover Largest Sulfur-Containing Molecular Compound in Space more

With unprecedented detail, a team of astronomers led by MPE have imaged the youngest disks around new-born stars. These glowing, chaotic systems are hotter and heavier than expected, hinting that planets may start forming much earlier than previously thought. more

The German Astronomical Society (AG) has awarded the prestigious Karl Schwarzschild Medal 2025 to Prof. Dr. Paola Caselli, Director of the Center for astrochemical studies (CAS) at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, for her groundbreaking work in the fields of astrochemistry and star formation. more

Teresa Valdivia-Mena receives both Otto Hahn Medal and Otto Hahn Award from the Max Planck Society more

For the first time, a team at Leiden University led by Ewine van Dishoek, an external scientific member of MPE, has robustly detected semi-heavy water ice around a young, sun-like star. These results support the theory that some of the water in our solar system originated before the Sun and its planets formed. The researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to make their discovery, which they have published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. more

Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and analyzed by, among others, researchers from MPE’s Center of Astrochemistry (CAS), have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine.
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In collaboration with the astrochemistry group of Prof. Caselli, Prof. Barbara Ercolano will work on the birth environments of exoplanets as new Max Planck Fellow at the MPE. Currently working at the University Observatory Munich, this joint position will strengthen the cooperation between MPG and LMU. more

An international group of astrophysicists, led by MPE scientists Marta Obolentseva, Alexei Ivlev, Kedron Silsbee, and Paola Caselli, have revisited the long-standing problem of evaluating the rate at which cosmic rays ionize gas in the interstellar medium. By combining available observational data for diffuse molecular clouds with novel developments in understanding the dust and gas distribution in these regions and applying numerical modeling, the scientists were able to compute the cosmic-ray ionization rate (or its upper limit) for a dozen nearby clouds. They showed that earlier estimates were a factor of ten too high. more