Trailer Open Day 2023

When planets migrate

March 25, 2024

There are too few exoplanets that are twice the size of the Earth. Remo Burn from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has discovered that this is because many planets do not stay where they were formed. Rocky planets that migrate inwards lose their atmosphere and shrink as a result, whereas icy planets would form a denser atmosphere in the first…

Searching for clues in distant worlds and the atmospheres of exoplanets

March 10, 2024

James Webb Space Telescope: What can we learn about the atmospheres of exoplanets with the largest space telescope? How is the JWST revolutionising our knowledge of exoplanets? Eva-Maria Ahrer reports on research into the atmospheres of exoplanets and presents new results.

Upgrade of the VLT with Adaptive Optics - A Sharper View of the Stars

February 22, 2024

How can the performance of an earthbound telescope be improved? Silvia Scheithauer reports on the CIAO instrument, the adaptive optics for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

Euclid – the new space telescope

February 07, 2024

Euclid

Euclid is a new ESA space telescope with the participation of a scientific consortium from fourteen European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan. Euclid was launched on 1 July 2023. Over the next 6 years, Euclid will record images and spectra of a third of the entire sky. The goal: to get to the bottom of the nature of dark matter and dark energy…

Planet formation under the harshest conditions

January 22, 2024

Good news for Earth-like planets and for life in the Universe: planets like our Earth, including those with water, could form even in the most inhospitable star-forming environments known, flooded by energetic UV light from massive stars. María Claudia Ramírez-Tannus from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy tells us how the JWST helped her…

Angular Differential Imaging (ADI)

January 19, 2024

Astronomical (imaging) data are generally heavily post-processed, and/or analysed in a complex way. Especially high-contrast observations require specific post-processing methods to remove image residuals that remain after all the sophisticated optical suppression methods. One such method, angular differential imaging, is explained in this video…

MPIA International

January 10, 2024

The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, employs people from around 60 countries from all over the world. On the occasion of the Open Day on 14 October 2023, we have produced a video in which some of them introduce themselves. They talk about how they came to MPIA and how they experience their working…

New Stars in the Whirlpool Galaxy

January 08, 2024

As part of her doctoral thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Sophia Stuber is researching star formation in nearby galaxies. Shortly before Christmas, her latest article was published, in which she and her colleagues mapped the whirlpool galaxy Messier 51 in the light of the molecules hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and diazenyl…

Laboratory Astrophysics – Cosmic Dust and Molecules Made in the Lab

January 07, 2024

Cosmic dust is enormously important. Although often only a few nanometres in size, it can have a lasting influence on global cosmic processes, such as star formation, by absorbing and scattering starlight and subsequently emitting radiation. In molecular clouds, the chemical factories of the cosmos, it provides the surface for the formation of…

The birthplaces of stars in the Whirlpool Galaxy

December 20, 2023

Animation illustrating the distribution of diazenylium and hydrogen cyanide within the Whirlpool Galaxy. Starting from an overview of the galaxy captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the animation zooms in on the central region. Subsequently, overlays of the signatures of both molecules are presented. While their intensity uniformly increases and…

William Herschel – Music and Astronomy

August 10, 2023

William Herschel (Wilhelm Herschel) is considered the discoverer of Uranus. In his lecture, Markus Nielbock introduces William Herschel, emphasising his role as a musician and astronomer. He will explain how Herschel came to England, how he started his career as a musician and how he finally made important discoveries as an astronomer.

Water in the terrestrial planet-forming zone of the PDS 70 disk

July 24, 2023

The animation explains the detection of water in the zone near the star PDS 70, where rocky planets usually form. First we see the starry sky and approach the position of PDS 70. Then the video shows two different observations of the planet-forming disk with the positions of the two gas giant planets. Finally, we see a section of the spectrum with…

Trailer for theOpen Day 2023

Movie Overview

Trailer for the
Open Day 2023