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Scientific Highlights
Journey to the Beginning of Time
Potsdam, 8th October 2018. With the Pristine survey, an international team is looking for and researching the oldest stars in our Universe. The goal is to learn more about the young Universe right after the Big Bang. In a recent publication, the scientists have reported on the discovery of a particularly metal-poor star: a messenger from the distant past.
The glowing Universe
Using the MUSE spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), scientists have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The international team led by Lutz Wisotzki, Professor of Observational Cosmology at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the University of Potsdam, observed for the first time how far such luminous hydrogen clouds extend into space. The researchers now report on this in the current issue of "Nature".
Uncovering the birthplaces of stars in the Milky Way
13 September 2018. An international team of scientists led by Ivan Minchev of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) has found a way to recover the birth places of stars in our Galaxy. This is one of the major goals in the field of Galactic Archaeology, whose aim is to reconstruct the formation history of the Milky Way.
Sun under double observation
13th August 2018. NASA's Parker Solar Probe, launched on 12th August, will be the first spacecraft to approach the sun reaching 10 solar radii, and will provide science with new insights into our home star over the next few years. An international project under the auspices of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) adds ground-based measurements at the same time - enabling completely new insights into solar activity and its effects on Earth.
Digging deeper: First catalogue of X-ray sources in overlapping observations published
25th July 2018. Members of the X-ray astronomy working group at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (AIP) and an international team have published the first catalogue of X-ray sources in multiply observed sky regions. The catalogue comprises almost 72,000 objects, partly of exotic nature, which were observed with the space-based X-ray telescope XMM-Newton. It provides information on the physical properties of the sources and enables astronomers to identify brightness variations on time scales of several years - and includes several thousand new detections.
Neptune closer than ever: Super Sharp Pictures form the Edge of our Solar System
18th July 2018. Astronomers from the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) tested as part of an international team a new observation mode with the MUSE instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile in June 2018. The technology used for the first time suppresses the blurred effects of the atmosphere even better and produces very sharp images of planets, stars and galaxies – among others of Neptune, which was once discovered at the predecessor institute of the AIP.
Using Very Pristine Stars to Study Dwarf Galaxies & the Galactic Halo
6th June 2018. Kris Youakim from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is talking this week at the 232nd AAS meeting about his latest results on the analysis of the stellar debris in the galactic halo. Our Milky Way is a relatively large galaxy, and the current accepted theories suggest that it was built up over time by the accretion of smaller, low-mass galaxies.
Spinning rugby balls: The rotation of the most massive galaxies
23rd May 2018. By targeting the most massive galaxies in our universe, astronomers have studied how their stars move. The results are surprising: while half of them spin around their short axis as expected, the other half turn around their long axis. Such kinematics are most likely the result of a special type of galaxy merger, involving already massive, similar-mass galaxies. This would imply that the growth of the most massive and the largest galaxies is governed by these rare events.
Sun in sight: Tailored solution for collaborative research
Since 2014, Europe's largest solar telescope GREGOR has been used for scientific measurements and has collected large amounts of very complex, multidimensional data during this time. To make these immense amount of data usable and accessible for the research community, scientists of the departments of Solar Physics and E-Science at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) have now developed a Collaborative Research Environment (CRE). The results were presented in a recently released special issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on Big Data in Solar and Stellar Physics.
1.69 billion stars
Derived from 22 months of observations, the much awaited second data release of the Gaia mission is now public. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) contributed to the common effort with software modules providing first look validation and background correction for the data of the radial velocity spectrometer. Additionally AIP is one of the official Gaia Partner Data Centres that host a mirror of the complete Gaia archive.
Hide and Seek: a Black Hole in a Giant Star Cluster
17 January 2018. Astronomers, under the lead of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and with participation of the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) using ESO’s MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered a star in the cluster NGC 3201 that is behaving very strangely. It appears to be orbiting an invisible black hole with about four times the mass of the Sun — the first such inactive stellar-mass black hole found in a globular cluster and the first found by directly detecting its gravitational pull. This important discovery impacts on our understanding of the formation of these star clusters, black holes, and the origins of gravitational wave events.
First PEPSI data release
9 January 2018. The Potsdam Echelle Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Instrument (PEPSI) at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona released its first batch of high-spectral resolution data to the scientific community. In a series of three papers in the European journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the PEPSI team presents a new spectral atlas of the Sun, a total of 48 atlases of bright benchmark stars, and a detailed analysis of the chemical abundances of the 10-billion year old planet-system host Kepler-444.
MUSE most detailed look at galaxy field
29 November 2017. Astronomers using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile focused on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, measuring distances and properties of 1600 very faint galaxies including 72 galaxies that have never been detected before. This resulted in the deepest spectroscopic observations ever made and 10 science papers that are being published in a special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Light in the dark - Galaxies enriching MultiDark universe
20 November 2017. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) have joined an international research team to create one of the largest sets of galaxies in a computer generated universe. The data are published via AIP's CosmoSim database.
Next generation astronomical survey to map the entire sky
17 November 2017. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will award a $16 million grant for the next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V). The grant will kickstart a groundbreaking all-sky spectroscopic survey for a next wave of discovery, anticipated to start in 2020.
The LBT gets polarized: First light for the PEPSI polarimeters
12 October 2017. Thanks to a cleverly designed "two-in-one" instrument attached to the world's most powerful telescope, astronomers can extract more clues about the properties of distant stars or exoplanets than previously possible.
L'Oréal-UNESCO Fellowship for cosmologist Jenny Sorce
10 October 2017. To produce cosmological simulations and study our local neighbourhood in the Universe: The cosmologist Dr. Jenny Sorce received a fellowship of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme. Sorce is a postdoctoral researcher at the astronomical observatory in Strasbourg, France, and a guest researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP). She was awarded a fellowship in the French national programme, which is granted annually, and will receive 20,000 euros.
Perspectives of Astrophysics in Germany from 2017 to 2030
19 September 2017. At the annual meeting of the German Astronomical Society 2017, the Council of German Observatories presented the Denkschrift 2017 “Perspectives of astrophysics in Germany 2017-2030: From the beginnings of the cosmos to clues for life on extrasolar planets“. In this publication, the Council of German Observatories (in German: Rat Deutscher Sternwarten, or RDS for short) gives an overview of the status of the field of astronomy and astrophysics, presents the main scientific questions and lays out the structures needed to further promote the field. The RDS recommends for example the participation of Germany in the construction and further development of major observatories such as the Extremely Large Telescope and other observatories by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, the Square Kilometre Array in South Africa and Australia, and the European Solar Telescope on Tenerife. The RDS supports a strong German investment in space research, especially within the national space program.
Solar eclipse in one hundred spectra
12 September 2017. A solar eclipse gives researchers the opportunity to observe parts of the sun that are normally invisible. With the Solar Disk Integrated Telescope (SDI) on Mount Graham in Arizona, USA, scientists of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) have remotely observed the solar eclipse on 21 August 2017. During the course of the eclipse, they obtained about one hundred spectra in two wavelength regions. The SDI feeds light into the PEPSI high-resolution spectrograph in the pier of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT).
Stars and galaxies with MUSE - extra clear
02 August 2017. Spectacular improvement of astronomical observations with MUSE using adaptive optics. Astronomers have been observing distant galaxies and nebulae with unprecedented quality using the MUSE instrument at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). This was made possible by commissioning of a new adaptive optics facility at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Chilean Atacama desert.
