Max Planck Institutes and Experts

Massive stars are much rarer and they form much faster than low-mass stars – which is why it is quite unlikely to be able to observe their early stages. In addition, all regions with massive young stars are at a greater distance from our solar system, resulting in stringent requirements for the resolution and sensitivity of the instruments used for observation. However, today the new interferometers in the sub-millimeter and millimeter range enable the investigation of more distant star formation regions at high spatial resolution and sufficient sensitivity. An international team lead by MPIA managed to gain interesting insights into several massive star-forming regions, including the famous Orion KL region.

Scientists at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) have performed detailed computations of the highly redshifted radiation that is released during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination. Progress in the development of radio detectors may render these small deviations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum from a perfect blackbody observable, thereby offering a complementary way to measure the exact value of the CMB temperature, the entropy of the Universe, and to provide direct evidence about how our Universe became transparent.

Three years since its completion, the Millennium Run remains the largest simulation of cosmological structure formation. Over 100 papers [1] have been written based on its numerical data. More than half of these are by authors who have accessed the data through a web service of the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (GAVO). This is the most complete application yet of Virtual Observatory techniques to the publication of theoretical data.

At the end of the fifteenth Century the Cesarini family ascended to the nobility of Rome. In order to consolidate this position, they developed specific strategies: They claimed to descend from the ancient nobility of Rome and they exploited their office of the Roman standard-bearer (Gonfaloniere) to demonstrate their close connection with the traditions of Rome. A study in the Research Area „Malerei und Bildkünste der Frühen Neuzeit“ of the Bibliotheca Hertziana reconstructs these strategies in detail.

This article describes an optical microscopy method with nanoscale resolution independent of the wavelength, based on atomic force microscopy, where a scanning tip is used for mechanical probing and for scattering optical near-fields. Operating at infrared frequencies, potential applications range from characterization of solid state surfaces to identification of single nanoparticles and macromolecules.