Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

The name itself actually precisely describes its field of research: the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. The scientists in Göttingen focus on Earth's cosmic neighbourhood – the Sun, the planets and their moons, as well as a variety of small bodies. They look into the heart of the star that keeps us alive, investigate its gaseous envelope, the solar magnetic field and the high-energy particles which our Sun ejects into space. The surfaces of the planets and their different “spheres” – atmospheres, ionospheres and magnetospheres – their rings and satellites, as well as comets and planetoids are further subjects for physical models and numerical simulations. And since the objects are not that far away, astronomically speaking, the Max Planck researchers love to take a look around for themselves – not in person, but by using international space probes and landers, for which they develop and build instruments and detectors.

Contact

Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3
37077 Göttingen
Phone: +49 551 384 979-0
Fax: +49 551 384 979-240

PhD opportunities

This institute has an International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS):

IMPRS for Solar System Science

In addition, there is the possibility of individual doctoral research. Please contact the directors or research group leaders at the Institute.

Department Physics of planets and comets

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Department Physics of the interior of the Sun and Sun-like stars

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Department Planetary Science Department

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Department Solar physics and heliosphere

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yellow-reddish disc

Newly analyzed data from ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft offer the first high-resolution view of the entire solar disk

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Asteroid with diamond shape and rough surface in front of black background

Samples of asteroid Ryugu call into question previous ideas about the formation of carbon-rich asteroids.

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Planet with approaching spacecraft

Bright yellow deposits in Consus Crater bear witness to dwarf planet Ceres' cryovolcanic past - and revive the debate about its place of origin.

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A reddish disk with rings and gaps and a white shining center

In young planetary systems, gas giants form more efficiently and faster than previously assumed as shown by new computer simulations.

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Photos from the landing site show, that observatory is in good shape after its stratospheric research flight

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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.

Small bodies orbiting the Sun are either comets or asteroids – for many years, this was the official line in textbooks. At the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Goettingen, Jessica Agarwal is studying “active asteroids”, small solar system bodies that don’t quite fit into the traditional categories.

Postdoctoral Position (f/m/d) | Exoplanets Formation

Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen November 20, 2024

Postdoctoral Position (f/m/d) | Solar System formation

Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen November 20, 2024

Meteorites: rocky witnesses to the history of the formation of Earth and Mars

2023 Krummheuer, Birgit; Kleine, Thorsten

Astronomy Astrophysics

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.

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The WHOLE SUN Investigation 

2022 Bekki, Yuto; Cameron, Robert; Gizon, Laurent

Astronomy Astrophysics

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). 

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Cassini sheds new light on the physics of planetary radiation belts

2021 Roussos, Elias; Krupp, Norbert; Christensen, Ulrich

Astronomy Astrophysics

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.

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Brightness variability of solar-like stars

2020 Shapiro, Alexander; Reinhold, Timo; Witzke, Veronika

Astronomy Astrophysics

The brightness variability of the Sun and other cool stars is one of the most exciting manifestations of the interaction between the matter and the magnetic field in their atmospheres. The recently achieved unprecedented precision of stellar brightness measurements as well as the progress in simulations of stellar atmospheres allows coming closer to understanding the origin of stellar magnetic activity and resulting brightness variations. Furthermore, stellar data allows constraining solar magnetic activity in the past and future as well as the resulting solar-terrestrial connection.

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Rossby waves in the Sun

2019 Gizon, Laurent; Proxauf, Bastian

Astronomy Astrophysics

Researchers from the Solar and Stellar Interiors Department at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have discovered new giant vortex waves in the Sun. Because of their long periods of oscillation of several months, the detection of these waves required many years of observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a NASA spacecraft in operation since 2010. These waves are an important component of the solar convection zone dynamics at the largest spatial scales. They can potentially be used as new probes of the solar interior.

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