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Nov. 16, 2023
Novae
| Dr. Axel Schwope
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Oct. 19, 2023
4MOST
| Joar Brynnel, Dr. Andreas Kelz, Dr. Roelof de Jong
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Joar Brynnel gives a German presentation on the new instrument 4MOST, which is being built under the direction of the AIP. Following the lecture, Dr Andreas Kelz, allows the audience a glimpse directly into the integration halls of the institute and explains some of the components of the instrument.
An English lecture on 4MOST including a tour of the integration hall by project leader Dr Roelof de Jong has also just been released as a video and is available on the YouTube channel "videowissen": https://youtu.be/7i97ZZNsdEM
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Sept. 21, 2023
Comment check: Resolved stellar populations - Pleiades and scientific working
| Prof. Dr. Martin Roth
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July 20, 2023
Fascinating facts about the Apollo missions
| Dr. Mirko Krumpe
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20 July marks the anniversary of the first successful landing on the Moon. Today, humankind is again preparing to land on the Earth's satellite. Using the Apollo missions as an example, Mirko Krumpe shows how many ambitious test flights were necessary and still are today before a moon landing can be successfully carried out. The lecture also looks at problems in the missions after Apollo 11 and highlights aspects that are not known to everyone.
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June 15, 2023
Comment check: Influence of supermassive black holes
| Prof. Dr. Christoph Pfrommer
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May 18, 2023
LOFAR: A next generation radio telescope
| Dr. Christian Vocks
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LOFAR is a Europe-wide radio telescope, which consists of quite inconspicuous looking single antennas or antenna fields, which are combined to a radio telescope. One of these antenna fields is located in Potsdam-Bornim. It is used for observing the sun (especially at the AIP), but also for studying other radio sources like pulsars.
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April 20, 2023
Geschüttelt und gerührt: Über den Ursprung großskaliger galaktischer Magnetfelder
| Dr. Oliver Gressel
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Spiral galaxies like our Milky Way are not only home to billions of stars but also the largest coherent magnets known in the universe. Radio observations with large telescopes like the 100m dish in Effelsberg near Bonn tell us that their magnetism is anchored in the interstellar plasma. The interstellar medium, in turn, is characterized by turbulence, which in turn is continuously driven by stellar explosions. The rotation and stratification of the galaxy as a whole thereby causes systematic turbulence, which enables a so-called dynamo. This effect describes the emergence of large-scale galactic magnetic fields, which are difficult to explain otherwise.
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March 16, 2023
Robotic Telescopes at AIP
| Dr. Thomas Granzer
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More than two decades ago, AIP began construction of its STELLA robotic observatory, which today consists of two 1.2-metre telescopes used for high-resolution spectroscopy and photometry, respectively. At the time, it was the first robotic high-resolution spectroscopic telescope ever built; to date, there are few projects that meet this challenge. Although it was built primarily for stellar research, it has been used successfully in other fields as well. In this talk, Thomas Granzer will give an overview of the technology and software developments that have been instrumental in the successful operation of the observatory and present the most important scientific results.
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Feb. 16, 2023
Comment check: Rotating Black Holes and accretion disks
| Prof. Dr. Christoph Pfrommer
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Jan. 19, 2023
Meteorite craters on Earth
| Dr. Jürgen Rendtel
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Meteorite craters are found on many celestial bodies, but on Earth most of these craters are no longer recognizable as such due to subsequent processes. In this lecture Dr. Jürgen Rendtel explains with various examples how meteorite impacts occur and how exactly the craters are formed.
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Dec. 15, 2022
How the Sun influences Earth: Space Weather
| Dr. Stefan Hofmeister
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During coronal mass ejections of the sun, the dependency on modern technology becomes particularly clear and in the past there have already been sensitive effects. Stefan Hofmeister shows examples and explains which solar activities are also a great danger for our digital life besides the coronal mass ejection.
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Nov. 17, 2022
Towards the Sun – Update for Solar Orbiter
| Dr. Alexander Warmuth
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ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched in February 2020 and has been in its science mission phase since its Earth-flyby about a year ago. In this talk, Alexander Warmuth will present some of the first scientific results of this space mission.
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Oct. 20, 2022
Comment check: Dark matter • Interaction with galaxies and black holes
| Dr. Ewald Puchwein
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Sept. 15, 2022
Comment check: Gas nebulae in galaxy clusters • Dark matter density • Gas mass
| Dr. Ewald Puchwein
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Aug. 7, 2022
Comment check: Das Schicksal junger Planeten: Wie Sterne ihre Planeten formen
| Laura Ketzer
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June 16, 2022
Comment check: Die glorreichen Sieben – Sieben ,nackte' Neutronensterne am Röntgenhimmel
| Dr. Axel Schwope
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May 19, 2022
Gezeitenwechselwirkung zwischen Sternen und Planeten
| Nikoleta Ilic
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Stars and planets can interact with each other in different ways. One interesting but also important way is tidal interaction. Even though our solar system has eight planets, even the closest planet to the Sun is too far away to have a significant tidal effect on it. However, we are aware of tidal interaction because we can observe it between planets and their moons (e.g. the Earth and its Moon). The discovery of exoplanets has enabled us to measure the influence of tides between stars and planets. So far, we have observed many planets around other stars that are so close to their parent stars that measurable tidal interaction can take place. In this lecture, possible consequences of tides on stars will be explained.
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May 1, 2022
Comment check: Das Schicksal junger Planeten: Wie Sterne ihre Planeten formen
| Laura Ketzer
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April 21, 2022
Comment check: Dark matter and the dance of dwarf galaxies
| Dr. Marcel Pawlowski
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With more than 64,000 views, a large number of questions and comments have accumulated under the video since May 2021. Marcel Pawlowski answers some of them, including those on topics such as the distinction between star clusters and dwarf galaxies and deeper considerations on dark matter and modified gravity.
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March 17, 2022
The Magnificent Seven - Seven "Naked" Neutron Stars in the X-ray Sky
| Dr. Axel Schwope
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About 25 years ago, the X-ray satellite ROSAT discovered a rare class of neutron stars. When ROSAT work was completed, there were exactly seven, then called "The Magnificent Seven". Their peculiarity is that one can actually see and consequently study their surface. The lecture summarizes our knowledge of these small noble stars and gives an outlook on the surveys with the X-ray telescope eROSITA.
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Feb. 17, 2022
Galaxy Clusters – Giants in Space
| Dr. Ewald Puchwein
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Galaxy clusters are the largest single objects in the universe. The talk explains what properties they have and why we know that, in addition to galaxies, they also contain large amounts of extremely hot gas and dark matter. Galaxy clusters also serve as an ideal laboratory to study the properties of dark matter and a number of other exciting astrophysical processes.
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Jan. 30, 2022
Comment check: Sonne: Was heizt die Korona auf Millionen Kelvin? Schwankt die Heliosphäre?
| Dr. Alexander Warmuth
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Jan. 20, 2022
Resolved stellar populations - from Galileo Galilei to the Extremely Large Telescope
| Prof. Dr. Martin Roth
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Galileo Galilei is (presumably) the first person to succeed, with the help of a first-generation telescope, in resolving the band of the Milky Way, which shines diffusely in the sky for the naked eye, into stars. At any rate, he first published this in his famous book "Siderius Nuntius" in 1610. Starting from this historical milestone, the lecture recapitulates the development of important methods of modern astrophysics for the determination of stellar parameters, such as photometry and the construction of colour-brightness diagrams, and spectroscopy and the construction of the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram. The importance of the development of technology since observation by eye, via photography to modern semiconductor image sensors is described. A local reference to the Babelsberg Observatory is the use of the photoelectric effect for objective brightness measurement, first applied by Paul Guthnick in 1913: in analogy to electronics, the emergence of a technology now called photonics.
The main part of the lecture is devoted to the still young field of integral field spectroscopy for the spatial resolution of densely packed stellar populations in globular clusters and nearby galaxies. As a further development of the extremely successful investigation of resolved stellar populations by means of "crowded field photometry", in particular with the Hubble Space Telescope, to "crowded field spectroscopy", it will be shown by means of examples that the unique instrument MUSE opens up a completely new dimension of quantitative spectroscopy, which promises brilliant prospects for groundbreaking work by astrophysicists, especially with the future Extremely Large Telescope of the ESO.
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Jan. 11, 2022
Comment check: Exoplaneten • Alfvén's Theorem • bekannte Unbekannte vs. unbekannte Unbekannte
| Ekaterina Ilin
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Dec. 21, 2021
Comment check: Are brown dwarfs candidated for dark matter?
| Dr. Ralf-Dieter Scholz
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Dec. 16, 2021
Das Schicksal junger Planeten: Wie Sterne ihre Planeten formen
| Laura Ketzer
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In addition to planetary formation and the question of how the Earth came into being, a major research focus is also on the further development of planets. What influences are particularly young planets exposed to and how does this affect their ageing and ultimately their fate? The fact is, young exoplanets grow up in a dangerous environment: their home stars produce huge amounts of high-energy X-rays and UV radiation, which can heat up the atmosphere of exoplanets, sometimes even literally boiling it away. What evidence is there for the evaporation of planetary atmospheres and what is the matter with the observed bimodal size distribution of exoplanets and the so-called radius valley?
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Dec. 7, 2021
Comment check: Habitable Planets around Brown Dwarfs
| Dr. Ralf-Dieter Scholz
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Nov. 18, 2021
Schwarze Löcher im Universum
| Prof. Dr. Christoph Pfrommer
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Black holes are among the most mysterious objects in our universe. But what do we really know about them and what is science fiction? In this lecture, we will embark on a journey to the limits of our knowledge and learn what makes black holes so fascinating. Christoph Pfrommer will explain the observations that finally convinced astrophysicists that black holes exist in reality and that were recently honoured with two Nobel Prizes. In addition, the scientist will present theories that explain the formation and growth of cosmic objects. But black holes are not isolated in the universe, they can even influence the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters. By studying black holes, we better understand the mysteries of cosmological structure formation.
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Nov. 9, 2021
Comment check: Solar Orbiter • Earth fly-by in Nov 2021 • Space trash • Heat protection
| Dr. Alexander Warmuth
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Oct. 21, 2021
Viel Wirbel um Sternenstaub – Die Strömungsmechanik der Planetenentstehung
| Dr. Oliver Gressel
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The question of how the Earth on which we are standing formed is closely linked to the formation of the solar system. The discovery of thousands of exoplanets in the last decade has not only made this topic more relevant, but has also added new dimensions, such as the question of how far exoplanet systems differ from our own, and whether this has its origin in their formation history.
It shall not be concealed that the major themes around planet formation represents a large unsolved puzzle, of which we understand some individual pieces quite well, but in which others present us with great challenges. New developments in the study of planet formation often build on insights from fluid mechanics, especially in the early stages. There, interstellar stardust is aggregated in order to build objects comparable to asteroids and comets, from which planets are then formed by collision. Magnetic fields often play a central role in this process because they influence the dynamics of the chaotic flows.
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Sept. 23, 2021
The discovery of Neptune
| Prof. Dr. Matthias Steinmetz
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In his lecture on the history of the discovery of Neptune, Professor Matthias Steinmetz reports on the events during the night of discovery, the various efforts of astronomers at the time to find another planet, and the controversies that followed the discovery.
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Aug. 19, 2021
Towards the Sun: The mission Solar Orbiter
| Dr. Alexander Warmuth
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The Sun, our home star, has always been of great importance to mankind. Since ancient times, the sun has been intensively observed and researched with ever new methods, yet it still puzzles us today. Therefore, on February 10, 2020, the space probe "Solar Orbiter" set out on its journey to the sun to study it at close range. One of the instruments on board is the X-ray telescope STIX, which was developed and built with involvement from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP). In this talk, Dr. Alexander Warmuth gives an insight into the planning, construction and launch of the space probe and present first data from the mission.
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July 25, 2021
Comment check: Neptune: Super sharp pictures from the edge of our Solar System
| Dr. Tanya Urrutia
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July 15, 2021
Distant Suns and their planets: a magnetic Tango
| Ekaterina Ilin
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We can see almost none of our closest neighbouring stars in the Milky Way with the naked eye. Only with a telescope do their fascinating physics reveal themselves. Small, cool, faint: at first glance they seem inconspicuous. But on closer inspection, we discover enormous magnetic explosions, extensive starspots, and energetic radiation that literally makes their big sister, the Sun, look old. In this lecture, we will travel to some of them and explore how the planets that orbit many of them fare in this extreme environment.
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July 4, 2021
Comment check: Cosmic roommates
| Prof. Dr. Klaus G. Strassmeier
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June 17, 2021
Comment check: eROSITA one year in space
| Dr. Axel Schwope
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In a separate comment check video, Dr. Schwope now addresses the many questions and comments on the talk, including such exciting questions as whether life is possible in globular clusters and how exactly eROSITA contributes to the study of dark energy.
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May 20, 2021
Dark matter and the dance of dwarf galaxies
| Dr. Marcel Pawlowski
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Large galaxies like our Milky Way are surrounded by a multitude of smaller dwarf galaxies. Cosmological computer simulations predict that these dwarf galaxies perform a chaotic dance. Observations, however, point to a surprisingly orderly choreography. This discrepancy challenges our model of cosmology and galaxy formation, and could fundamentally challenge our understanding of dark matter and gravity.
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May 2, 2021
Comment check: Planets around other stars
| Prof. Dr. Katja Poppenhäger
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April 15, 2021
Coole neighbours: Brown dwarfs and red dwarf stars in the local environment of our Sun
| Dr. Ralf-Dieter Scholz
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The stars in the immediate vicinity of the Sun are mostly cool red dwarf stars. Also cool is the search for still hidden, inconspicuous cosmic neighbours. There is an astonishing amount of stars to discover, especially extremely faint brown dwarfs. Among the discoveries of recent years is Scholz's Star, which not long ago approached the Sun up to a distance five times closer than today's known nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri. Further cosmic encounters are being detected and predicted with the help of the European space telescope Gaia.
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March 18, 2021
Neptune: Super Sharp Pictures from the Edge of our Solar System
| Dr. Tanya Urrutia
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In summer 2018, a new mode of the MUSE instrument in Chile captured the sharpest image of Neptune since 1989, when the Voyager 2 probe visited the gas giant. In the lecture, Dr Tanya Urrutia will use the image to introduce the principles of adaptive optics. Turbulence in the atmosphere makes astronomical images look blurry. With the technique of adaptive optics, in which extremely powerful lasers are shot into the sky, researchers can remove these turbulence effects and thus produce very sharp images. Scientific applications using this new method will also be presented.
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Feb. 18, 2021
How massive stars form galaxies
| Anika Beer
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Massive stars are proportionally fewer in number than low-mass stars, but they have a much greater influence on their environment and the evolution of galaxies. In this lecture, we will learn about the life cycle of massive stars as well as some exotic phases. In addition, the following questions will be answered: How heavy is the most massive star? What role do massive stars play in galaxy evolution? And: How can we actually observe these stars?
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Jan. 21, 2021
Cosmic roommates: The search for life in the universe
| Prof. Dr. Klaus G. Strassmeier
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Are we as a species alone in the universe, or is the universe as full of life as our blue planet? We don't know yet, but the rapid development in the discovery and exploration of extrasolar planets in recent years has lifted such questions out of the speculative and into the fact-based sciences. Never before have we been so close to solving the Drake equation, which predicts the number of communicating civilisations in our Galaxy. The talk will describe the astrophysically relevant facts for the preconditions for life as we know it, and reveal some quite astonishing projections from our own biological-social behaviour.
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Dec. 17, 2020
Planets around other stars - from exotic to Earth-like
| Prof. Dr. Katja Poppenhäger
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Prof. Dr. Katja Poppenhäger, head of the Department of Stellar Physics and Exoplanets at the AIP, will present the exotic siblings of the planets in our solar system. How many planets orbiting other stars have already been discovered? What different species live in the exoplanet zoo? And is there possibly a second Earth?
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Dec. 13, 2020
Christmas, George Washington's birthday and a high noon in the afternoon - From the history of time measurements and calendars
| Prof. Dr. Matthias Steinmetz
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What do Christmas, George Washington's birthday and a high noon in the afternoon have to do with each other? In his lecture, Prof. Dr. Matthias Steinmetz tells amusing and curious stories from the history of time measurement and calendaring. On a short journey through history, he provides exciting insights into how astronomy, political events and social developments are intertwined.
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Nov. 19, 2020
The origin of stars
| Dr. Philipp Girichidis
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Dr. Philipp Girichidis, researcher in the Cosmology and High-Energy Astrophysics section at the AIP, will explain how stars are born, where in the interstellar medium and under what physical conditions stars and stellar clusters can form, and will also go into the characteristics of molecular clouds. The lecture will be held in German.
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Oct. 15, 2020
The new image of the X-ray sky: eROSITA one year in space
| Dr. Axel Schwope
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Dr. Axel Schwope will begin with a lecture on "The new image of the X-ray sky: eROSITA one year in space". After a successful launch and a slightly bumpy commissioning phase, the eROSITA X-ray telescope has produced its first complete map of the X-ray sky. In just half a year, it found more X-ray objects in the sky than all other telescopes combined over the last 60 years. Although the scientific evaluation has only just begun, Axel Schwope can already report on some initial fascinating results and astonishing discoveries.
