Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

The giant sunspot of 1947 had the potential to trigger a massive solar flare

From tiny glass beads and a moon map to Mercury: A new study uses an indirect approach to determine the silicon dioxide content of Mercury’s surface.

The world’s largest solar telescope made small vortices visible that are changing our understanding of the sun

The Sunrise III mission offers a completely new view of the sun. First results have now been published

Eight Max Planck Society scientists have been awarded Advanced Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) in its latest funding cycle, each receiving up to €2.5 million for a period of five years to conduct their research projects.

Auroras are the nice side of space weather. But the solar system also has its storms. The Sun can unleash particle storms that cause considerable damage to technical infrastructure on Earth. Partly with the aid of new telescopes, specialists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research want to better understand why our star is especially active every 11 years. One of their main goals is to be able to forecast solar storms with enough warning to enable mitigating steps to be taken.

Max Planck researchers collaborate with partners in more than 120 countries. Some of them have kindly agreed to write about their personal experiences and observations for our website. Dietmar Germerott from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen spent 11 weeks at the Esrange Space Center balloon and rocket base in northern Sweden, where he watched over the Sunrise III mission. Here, he recounts his experiences from the launch of the balloon-borne solar observatory.

Life on Earth, as we know it today, exists thanks to many coincidences – and the planet Jupiter. Its weighty role in the Solar System is one aspect of its turbulent history, a subject Thorsten Kleine and Joanna Drążkowska investigate using meteorites and computer simulations at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen.

Hans-Peter Doerr from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research spent three weeks working at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California. He explains why the solar telescope stands on the water and tells us about anglers, gun enthusiasts, and alternative ways of transporting data.

The bizarre landscape seen in the photo is literally not of this world. Rather, the image shows the central area of the Occator crater on Ceres – a dwarf planet with a diameter of around 950 kilometers.

How tiny dust grains grow into giant planets is one of the great mysteries of astronomy. New models show for the first time how dust can locally accumulate in the protoplanetary disks around young stars, making the rapid growth of planetary cores possible at all. In this way, Jupiter could form early and, as a massive giant, steer the evolution of the entire Solar System. This also explains its present-day architecture, including the diversity of planets and small bodies at its outer edge.

Less than three years after the start of its scientific research mission, the space probe Solar Orbiter has already provided new and unique insights into the Sun. The observational data allow conclusions about the origin of the solar wind, reveal the smallest flares of radiation in the Sun's hot corona and, in collaboration with other space probes, offer an all-round view of our star's magnetic field. The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research plays a leading role in four of the scientific instruments on board.

Rock samples from Earth and Mars are contemporary witnesses of planet formation. Their composition provides clues as to how both bodies became the planets we know today over the course of millions of years. New studies of the isotope ratios of the metals molybdenum, titanium, zirconium and zinc in Martian meteorites suggest that the building material of both planets originated largely from the inner solar system. In the final phase of their development, however, the two unequal neighbors must have evolved differently.

Understanding the Sun’s magnetic activity requires us to understand the large-scale motions that drive the magnetic fields inside the Sun. These motions are driven by small-scale rotating convection. Our current best models for the large-scale dynamics are very wrong, and do not even predict the correct sign for the Sun’s latitudinal differential rotation – the Sun’s poles are observed to rotate slower (taking about 35 days for one rotation) than the equator (which takes about 25 days). 

Planetary radiation belts are those regions near a planet where the intrinsic magnetic field is strong enough to trap energetic charged particles like electrons and protons. In the past processes in the radiation belts of the Earth were thought to be the benchmark for all the other planetary radiation belts in the solar system. However, recently measurements onboard the Cassini spacecraft in the Kronian system have shown that Saturn’s belts are very different compared to Earth. A particle detector built at the MPI for Solar System research (MPS) even discovered a new, formerly unknown belt.