The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) on the topic "What binary stars tell us about the rotation of stars" (German) by Dr. David Gruner will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from Thursday, 19.06.2025.

On Wednesday 28 May 2025, the Maria-Margaretha-Kirch building will be officially opened on the campus of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam.

The integration and testing phase of 4MOST, is nearing completion. Over the coming weeks, the final components of this powerful instrument are being carefully packed. Media representatives are invited for a behind-the-scenes look and a special event on June 10 ahead of 4MOST’s final shipment to Chile.

Large and complex sunspot groups characterize the surface of the dynamic Sun during its activity cycle. A new camera system at the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) at the Observatorio del Teide on Tenerife uses image restoration methods to capture smallest details in active regions of the Sun's surface.

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 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.

The STELLA observatory in Tenerife studied a star’s surface for 16 years. Unlike the cyclic spots on our sun, this star exhibited chaotic, non-periodic star spot behavior, revealing a fundamentally different dynamo mechanism. The groundbreaking study has now been published in Nature Communications.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a grant of 2 million euros to the “Evaporator” project led by Professor Katja Poppenhäger.

The AIP application in the 2024 Leibniz Competition entitled “InSpecT” has been successfully approved. “InSpecT” will focus on the development of innovative fiber positioning systems for large telescopes. In the future, “InSpecT” will enable large-scale spectroscopic surveys of over 400 million stars and galaxies.

Last November 4th a contract was signed to fund the conceptual study of a new telescope, the Wide Field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST), which could potentially become operational in Chile after 2040. The consortium leading the WST project will receive three million euros.