Virtual lecture: Babelsberg Starry Night on 20 November 2025

Starry sky with numerous stars, orange nebula clouds, and bluish gas filaments in space.

Section of the sky with stars, clouds from star-forming regions and filament-like structures of a supernova remnant.

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2
Nov. 20, 2025 //

At the next virtual Babelsberg Starry Night of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Dr Daniel Sablowski follows a photon, or particle of light, on its cosmic odyssey. The video will be broadcast on the YouTube channel ‘Urknall, Weltall und das Leben’ (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from 20 November 2025.

The next lecture in the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights series will be online on Thursday at 8 p.m. Dr Daniel Sablowski is a research assistant in the Technical Section at AIP. In his lecture ‘The Odyssey of a Cosmic Photon’, he explains what can happen to the light on its journey from the vastness of space to observation with a telescope. Using spectrographs, researchers can break down the received light into its colour components and use such spectra to discover binary stars, the rotation of planets or even interstellar matter.

Usually on the 3rd Thursday of each month, starting at 8 p.m., the lectures of the Babelsberg Starry Nights become available at

https://www.aip.de/babelsberger-sternennaechte

and via the YouTube channels "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben" (Big Bang, Universe and Life) and "videowissen" and can be viewed afterwards at any time.

Starry sky with numerous stars, orange nebula clouds, and bluish gas filaments in space.

Section of the sky with stars, clouds from star-forming regions and filament-like structures of a supernova remnant.

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2
Nov. 20, 2025 //

At the next virtual Babelsberg Starry Night of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Dr Daniel Sablowski follows a photon, or particle of light, on its cosmic odyssey. The video will be broadcast on the YouTube channel ‘Urknall, Weltall und das Leben’ (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from 20 November 2025.

The next lecture in the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights series will be online on Thursday at 8 p.m. Dr Daniel Sablowski is a research assistant in the Technical Section at AIP. In his lecture ‘The Odyssey of a Cosmic Photon’, he explains what can happen to the light on its journey from the vastness of space to observation with a telescope. Using spectrographs, researchers can break down the received light into its colour components and use such spectra to discover binary stars, the rotation of planets or even interstellar matter.

Usually on the 3rd Thursday of each month, starting at 8 p.m., the lectures of the Babelsberg Starry Nights become available at

https://www.aip.de/babelsberger-sternennaechte

and via the YouTube channels "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben" (Big Bang, Universe and Life) and "videowissen" and can be viewed afterwards at any time.

The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is dedicated to astrophysical questions ranging from the study of our sun to the evolution of the cosmos. The key areas of research focus on stellar, solar and exoplanetary physics as well as extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aims at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world’s first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. The AIP has been a member of the Leibniz Association since 1992.
Last update: 20. November 2025