Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

Euclid space telescope delivers first scientific images

The Euclid space telescope contains technology from two Max Planck Institutes

New insights into the supermassive black hole and its surroundings at the centre of the Milky Way

Protostars feed from beyond their envelopes

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

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.

The discovery of the massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way was honored in 2020 with the Nobel prize. Yet, our research nowadays goes way beyond the discovery. We don’t ask anymore whether the black hole exists, rather we use it to conduct physics experiments in the sky. It is perfect laboratory, located at a mere 26.000 light years in our cosmic backyard. This allows for breath-taking precision measurements that not only test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, but that even reveal that beyond the black hole, not much more matter can hide in the Milky Way center.

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.