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.

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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, has 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.

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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 virtual Babelsberg Starry Night. The video will be broadcast on the YouTube channel ‘Urknall, Weltall und das Leben’ at 8 p.m.

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Cosmic events are determined by two natural forces: gravity and magnetic fields. The magnetic field research at the AIP is mainly focused on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations, the magnetically induced activities on the Sun and the stars, solar coronaphysics as well as space weather in our solar system and on planets around other stars.

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Galaxies are fundamental cosmic building blocks. At the largest scales, they serve as markers to study the distribution of matter in the universe - active galaxies and quasars are particularly important because of their intrinsic brightness. Nearby objects can be spatially resolved and consist of populations with very different patterns of motion, star formation histories and chemical abundances.

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