Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

Observations in a binary star system give hints in the search for progenitors of certain supernovae

Julia Zimmermann talks about the foundation of the company terraplasma GmbH

The scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is honoured for developing pioneering instruments

Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics on the first image of the galactic centre

The data of the space telescope contain the traces of many unknown celestial bodies

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).

Stars cluster in galaxies of dramatically different shapes and sizes: elliptical galaxies, spheroidal galaxies, lenticular galaxies, spiral galaxies, and occasionally even irregular galaxies. Nadine Neumayer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg and Ralf Bender at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching investigate the reasons for this diversity. They have already identified one crucial factor: dark matter.

The Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on black holes, in particular for the detection of the supermassive black hole that resides at the heart of our Milky Way. Reinhard Genzel shares the prize with Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose.

As a young girl, she was a talented painter and had a keen interest in art. The course for her future seemed set. Then she happened upon a book − a book that transported her into the vastness of space and ultimately decided her career aspirations. Paola Caselli thus became, not an artist, but an astrochemist. As a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, she is still just as fascinated by cosmic clouds as she was when she was 12.

The universe resembles an unfathomably large honeycomb. Gigantic galaxy clusters occupythe nodes of the waxy walls surrounding the cells composed of empty space. Hans Böhringerat the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching studies theseconglomerations of galaxies, and in the process, encounters the invisible aspects of space.

For the first time, we have observed a conveyor belt from the outskirts of a star-forming dense cloud directly depositing material near a pair of young forming stars. The gas motions in the conveyor belt, dubbed a 'streamer', mainly obey the gravitational pull from the innermost part of the core. The streamer delivers a large amount of gas with chemicals recently produced in the larger mother cloud directly to the young protostars. These results are striking evidence that the large-scale environment around forming stars has an important influence on small-scale disk formation and evolution.

Which galaxies harbour the most massive black holes? Even though galaxies tend to get more luminous towards their centres, the most massive galaxies exhibit a deficit of stars in their centres. The giant galaxy Holm 15A exhibits a particularly large deficit, and in this galaxy, we found a 40-billion-solar-mass black hole – the most massive known today. The faint centres of giant galaxies thus are an important indicator for the mass of their black hole – potentially even at distances, where direct measurements are not possible today.

Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) is a bilateral space mission of Russia and Germany with the German contribution of the primary payload, the X-ray telescope eROSITA. eROSITA will systematically scan the entire sky for four years with unprecedented sensitivity. The primary science goal is the determination of the large scale structure of the universe and how these structures evolved over cosmic times. This could aid to unlock the secrets of the enigmatic Dark Energy which drives the universe apart. The first scientific results confirm our confidence to reach the mission goals.

A century after the advent of the theory of general relativity by Albert Einstein, we are witnessing an outstanding year 2018 in black hole research. In three ground-breaking measurements with the MPE-led GRAVITY experiment, we could for the first time directly prove the gravitational redshift from a massive black hole, follow the orbital motion of accreting matter very close to the point of no return, and weigh the mass of black holes more than a billion light years away. With its unique image sharpness and sensitivity, GRAVITY is revolutionizing observational astronomy.

For a long time the formation of protostellar disks – a prerequisite to the formation of planetary system around stars – was considered to be difficult. The magnetic field threading the dense rotating molecular cloud is dragged to the center by the gravitational collapse, resulting in a braking effect that carries away angular momentum from the central region. Hardly any rotationally supported disk can form this way, unless the tiny grains are removed from the cloud and the separation between the magnetic field and the collapsing flow is enhanced.