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A horizontal composition of three individual portrait photographs, each enclosed in a grey frame with rounded corners. The person on the left has grey-brown hair and is smiling broadly, wearing a vibrant blue shirt with a light-coloured botanical pattern. The person in the centre wears glasses, a formal grey suit, and a dark red tie. The person on the right has grey hair and is wearing a light blue button-down shirt.

Prestigious Astronomy Award to be Presented during Conference at MPIA

May 19, 2026

The Gruber Foundation announces the recipients of the 2026 Gruber Cosmology Award. more

A partial black-and-white mosaic of the planet Mercury against a black background, captured by the Messenger spacecraft. The grey, spherical surface is heavily cratered, with impact sites of varying sizes, indicating billions of years of cosmic bombardment. The surface material is dark and basaltic, with prominent bright streaks (rays) emanating from younger craters where fresh subsurface material was ejected. The absence of atmospheric blurring produces sharp, high-contrast features, indicating a world directly exposed to the space environment and solar radiation.

Astronomers Explore the Surface Composition of a Nearby Super-Earth

May 04, 2026

Webb observations constrain the properties of a rocky exoplanet’s hot crust more

Artist’s impression of the exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab against a black, star-filled background. The right side of the frame is occupied by the curved silhouette of the planet, which is partially in shadow. Its atmosphere features intricate, swirling patterns in shades of brown, dark red, and white, resembling dense cloud bands. In the upper-left corner, its parent star glows as a bright, orange-yellow point of light. The surrounding space is deep black, dotted with faint distant stars.

Astronomers find an exo-Jupiter, and it seems to have clouds

April 22, 2026

A scientific collage consisting of 112 square individual images from the Euclid space telescope, arranged in a grid of 8 rows and 14 columns on a black background. Each square features a different strong gravitational lens in the distant universe. At the center of almost every image is a bright, mostly yellowish-white foreground galaxy. Distinctive features of spacetime warping are visible around these central galaxies: light from even more distant background galaxies appears as glowing blue arcs, thread-like structures, or nearly complete circles known as Einstein rings. Some images also show point-like multiple images of the same background galaxy arranged symmetrically around the center. The details are extremely sharp, with additional tiny, distant galaxies and stars visible as faint points of light in the background of each square.

Euclid Space Warps – help spot galaxies bending spacetime

April 21, 2026

Germany’s role in preparing the citizen science project more

Person in dark clothing with crossed arms, casting shadow on wall: the Ugandan astronomer Geoffrey Andama.

“The best science thrives in community”

February 10, 2026

Geoffrey Andama was a mentee in the first round of the ARTEMIS program in 2023. Since September 2025, he has headed the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Unit at Muni University in Uganda. The new unit is dedicated to developing astrophysics and astronomy across Africa. In this interview, Andama talks about his path into science, the role of mentoring, and his vision for astronomy on the continent. more

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