Research Minister Dorothee Bär visits MPE

The new Federal Minister of Research, Technology and Space, Dorothee Bär, was a guest at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. In addition to a discussion with Nobel Prize winner and MPE Director Reinhard Genzel, she also visited the integration hall where the MICADO instrument is currently being constructed.

At the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Research Minister Dorothee Bär met with MPE Directors Reinhard Genzel and Frank Eisenhauer, Directors of the Department of Infrared/Submillimeter Astronomy, and Paul Nandra, Director of High Energy Astrophysics, for a discussion and to find out about current research at the MPE. The Minister was accompanied by Dr. Johannes Eberle, Head of the “Research, Science System” Department at the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.

The Minister was then taken to the Integration Hall. There, scientist Eckhard Sturm presented the MICADO instrument, which is currently under construction. When completed, MICADO will be six meters high and weigh around 20 tons and is due to be put into operation by the end of the decade. It will serve as a camera for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the largest optical telescope in the world, which is currently being built in Chile by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Minister also visits ESO and IPP

The visit to MICADO thus directly followed on from the Research Minister's previous appointment, when she visited the ESO Supernova together with the Bavarian Minister of State for Science and Culture, Markus Blume, and marveled at the current status of the ELT, which is roughly the size of the Colosseum in Rome. At the end of her visit to Garching, the Minister learned about the current status of fusion research at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP).