Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy

New radio observations of molecular gas reveal how dozens of galaxies rapidly merge together in the early universe.

Observations with the Event Horizon Telescope enable researchers to localize the likely base of the central outflow in a massive galaxy

A collaboration between Fraunhofer and the Max Planck Society supplies the European Southern Observatory with the world's lowest-noise amplifiers

Event Horizon Telescope observations capture evolving polarization patterns around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87

A look into the throat of an active galaxy reveals a ring-shaped magnetic field that may explain extreme gamma radiation and neutrinos

There are bursts in the sky that are far stronger than lightning. They come from the depths of space and, in extreme cases, release as much energy in milliseconds as the Sun does in a year. These fast radio bursts are far enough away that they pose no danger to humanity. Nevertheless, astronomers want to know what causes them. At the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, research groups led by Laura Spitler and Michael Kramer are getting closer to solving the mystery. James Lough from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) thinks that spacetime shocks might even be involved.

As satellite mega-constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb get increasingly bigger, they are radically altering the night sky. This has consequences for astronomy. The satellites reflect sunlight and, alongside their intended communication signals, they also emit unwanted radio waves towards the Earth. This interferes with the work of astronomy, which measures very weak radio waves from the cosmos.

Silke Britzen moves between two spheres. As a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, she analyzes the epitome of darkness. That is to say, she studies black holes with telescopes that nearly span the globe. As an artist, she paints pictures bursting with color. Her approach to both research and painting is unorthodox.

The active nuclei of galaxies are among the mightiest powerhouses in the cosmos. They derive their energy from black holes at their centers, which sometimes occur in pairs. In a large-scale campaign, a group led by Stefanie Komossa from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn used several telescopes to peer into the heart of one such energy slingshot.

Sitting deep in the heart of the Milky Way, it is 27,000 light years from Earth and resembles a donut: this is how the black hole at the center of our galaxy looks in the image obtained by researchers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

The nanohertz region of the gravitational wave spectrum is expected to be home to some of the most exotic sources in the Universe. Supermassive black hole binaries at the centres of merging galaxies, cosmic strings and certain forms of dark matter may radiate at these frequencies. Decades-long projects, using radio telescopes around the world to measure the effect of these waves on spinning neutron stars (pulsars), are now seeing the first evidence for a corresponding gravitational wave background.

By combining two of the most powerful radio telescopes on Earth, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, created the most sensitive maps of the radio emission of large parts of the Northern Galactic plane so far. Contrary to previous surveys, GLOSTAR observed not only the radio continuum in the frequency range from 4-8 GigaHertz in full polarization, but simultaneously also spectral lines that trace the molecular gas and atomic gas via radio recombination lines.

This year, we were able to present the first image of the "shadow" of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. It is the result of years of data analysis, which began in 2017 with the Event Horizon Telescope and resulted in the first image of such a black hole in the galaxy Messier 87 in 2019. Once again, over 30 employees from all departments of the institute were involved. This image is also a scientific breakthrough. But what makes it special? Why was the data analysis much more challenging than in the case of M87?

2021 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of the radio telescope in Effelsberg. In the past decades, the telescope, whose construction broke new technical ground, has produced numerous important observational results. Thanks to constant improvements and renewals it is still state-of-the-art. Selected current observational projects are presented here.

Extremely precise measurements of the motion of a fast-spinning pulsar in a triple star system provide one of the strongest tests ever of a simple, but fundamental prediction of general relativity: that gravity affects all objects with the same acceleration, without regard for their composition, density or the strength of their own gravitational field. General relativity has again survived this test, one of the most stringent ever, which strongly constrains many alternative theories of gravity.