On Friday, 23 May 2025, from 7.15 pm, the AIP once again invites guests to a Live Babelsberg Starry Night on the Babelsberg campus. Dr Christian Vocks will speak about ‘The sun and space weather’. In his lecture, Christian Vocks will explain how sunspots, flares and coronal mass eruptions are created - and what influence these phenomena have on the Earth and our technology. This will be followed by a guided tour of the campus and - if the sky is clear - an observation at one of the Babelsberg telescopes.

The next Virtual Babelsberg Starry Night of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), will feature two lectures on the topic "Solar Orbiter – X-ray view of the Sun" (in German) by Dr. Alexander Warmuth. The lectures will be broadcast on the YouTube channels “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) and “videowissen” from Thursday, 17 April 2025.

With an unusual arrangement of dwarf galaxies, the Andromeda galaxy surprises one team from the AIP. A new study in the journal Nature Astronomy suggests that the current cosmological model may not be complete.

The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) on the topic "Stars in the Computer tomograph" (German) by Dr. Axel Schwope will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from Thursday, 20.03.2025.

See the partial solar eclipse on the AIP campus in Potsdam-Babelsberg

On Tuesday, 18 March 2025, from 7.15 pm, the AIP invites you to a Babelsberg Starry Night live on the Babelsberg campus. Dr Tanya Urrutia will give a lecture on the topic ‘Hubble & Webb Deep Fields – Images of the Young Universe’.

The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) on the topic "The age of stars – and how it can be determined" (German) by Dr. David Gruner will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from Thursday, 20.02.2025.

Learn about the work at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam.

The European Space Agency’s Milky Way-mapper Gaia has completed the sky-scanning phase of its mission, racking up more than three trillion observations over the last decade to revolutionise the view of our home galaxy and cosmic neighbourhood.

The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) on the topic "Searching for the X-ray emitters in the Universe" (German) by Dr. Iris Traulsen will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from Thursday, 16thJanuary 2025.

By peering into the cosmic dance of stars, a team led by researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) has unravelled the complex structure of our Milky Way galaxy. Assuming that each observed star represents a larger population of stars sharing the same orbit, they have reconstructed the properties of these “hidden” stars, filling in gaps in the Galactic disc that holds the secrets of our Galaxy's past, present, and future.

On 10 December 1999, the European Space Agency's X-ray satellite XMM-Newton began its journey to investigate X-ray sources in the universe. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) has been involved for three decades with software development and data analysis.