Heavyweight in the heart of the Abell 85 central galaxy
Astronomers discover the heaviest black hole in the nearby universe with 40 billion solar masses
Revealing the Beauty of the Hidden Universe: eROSITA sees first light
The scientific performance demonstrated in the first weeks of operations of the eROSITA X-ray telescope promises a breakthrough in our understanding of the energetic Universe.
What powers the most powerful explosions in the Universe?
The physical process driving Gamma-Ray Bursts might be synchrotron radiation after all
Twin baby stars grow from gas streamers out of a common disk
High-resolution images of a young stellar binary system for the first time reveal a complex network of accretion filaments nurturing two proto-stars at the centre of the circum-binary disk. With these observations, an international team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics was able to identify a two-level accretion process, circum-binary disk to circumstellar disk to stars, constraining the conditions leading to the formation and evolution of binary star systems.
How to spin a disk around young protostars
How do stars and planets form? Scientists are now one step closer to pinning down the conditions for the formation of proto-stellar disks. Observations of three systems in the early stages of star formation in the Perseus cloud revealed that the profile of the angular momentum in these systems is between that expected for a solid body and pure turbulence, indicating that the influence of the core extends further out than previously thought. These findings could lead to more realistic initial conditions for numerical simulations of disk formation.
eROSITA launch heralds new era for X-ray astronomy
MPE telescope will revolutionize our view of the evolving hot Universe
Galaxies consist of star-forming regions sparkling as fireworks
Star formation within interstellar gas clouds proceeds very rapidly, yet highly inefficiently. Most of the gas is quickly dispersed by stellar radiation, leading to a violent cycling in which star-forming regions are flickering as sparkles in fireworks. A team of scientists including researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has come to these conclusions based on new observations of the spiral galaxy NGC300.