An international team of researchers, led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), has shed light on a decades-long debate about why galaxies rotate faster than expected, and whether this behaviour is caused by unseen dark matter or a breakdown of gravity on cosmic scales.

On Thursday, 23 October, Prof. Matthias Steinmetz will talk about the large-scale instrument project 4MOST – the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope – in the next virtual Babelsberg Starry Night. The video will be broadcast on the YouTube channel ‘Urknall, Weltall und das Leben’ at 8 p.m.

On October 18, 2025, the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) facility, installed on the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, obtained its first light - it is now ready to begin its scientific journey. Moreover, 4MOST does not simply take images of the sky; it records spectra, capturing the light of each object in every individual colour. With this capability, it can unravel the light of 2400 celestial objects simultaneously into 18,000 colour components, allowing astronomers to study their detailed chemical composition and properties.

New research shows that dark matter has a different distribution in our galaxy than previously thought and that advances dark matter’s status as potential source of the observed gamma ray excess in the Milky Way’s center. High-resolution simulations reveal that the dark matter distribution in the inner galaxy is not spherical, but flattened and asymmetrical. The findings confirm the theory that the gamma ray excess is due to dark matter annihilation.

In the dark season, the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is once again inviting visitors to the popular Babelsberg Starry Nights at its research campus. The next lecture will take place on Tuesday, 14 October 2025, at 7:15 p.m.

Scientists at the AIP have uncovered the intricate magnetic heartbeat of a distant star remarkably similar to our own Sun—but much younger and more active. This groundbreaking study, part of the Far Beyond the Sun campaign, follows nearly three years of ultra precise observations and sheds new light on how stars like our Sun generate their magnetic fields—and how these fields evolve over time.

Dr Meetu Verma is one of the recipients of this year's WISER programme, a joint initiative of the Indian government's Ministry of Science and Technology (DST) and the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).

At the next virtual Babelsberg Starry Night of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Dr Marcel Pawlowski answers questions about his lectures on satellite galaxies and MOND – alternative theories of gravity. The video will be broadcast on the YouTube channel ‘Urknall, Weltall und das Leben’ (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from 18 September 2025.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has awarded the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award to Dr. Alexis Rouillard, researcher at the Astrophysics and Planetology Research Institute in Toulouse to deepen his research on solar winds at AIP.

The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will once again take part at the nationwide Long Night of Astronomy on 13 September 2025.

A newly published study led by AIP presents a comprehensive catalogue of solar energetic electron events and shows that the apparent delay between solar eruptions and the detection of electrons in space is not due to late release, but to their turbulent journey through the solar wind.

The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) on the topic "ANDES – high resolution spectrograph for the ELT " (in German) by Dr. Michael Weber will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from Thursday, 17.07.2025.