A few days ago, the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile succeeded for the first time in using four lasers to create artificial stars in the upper atmosphere, enabling the four 8-meter telescopes of the VLTI to perform outstandingly sharp observations of the sky. The lasers are part of the GRAVITY+ upgrade of the VLT interferometer. This upgrade also increases the sensitivity of the system by a factor of 10 and makes it possible to study celestial objects at virtually any point in the sky. more

New instrument will provide numerous high-resolution spectra, complementing existing data more

On the initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), an Onboarding Day for the business trainees of the Heidelberg Max Planck Institutes was held for the first time on 4 September 2025. more

A newly discovered distant object that astronomers have dubbed “The Cliff” could solve a riddle posed by some of the first observations of the distant universe with the James Webb Space Telescope, related to the discovery of a population of objects dubbed “little red dots.” Those objects were thought to be young galaxies, but with such considerable mass as would have been difficult to explain in current models of cosmic evolution. “The Cliff” has led to a proposal that could resolve this problem: Little red dots are not galaxies, but instead supermassive black holes that are embedded in a thick envelope of gas. The researchers call this new class of object a “black hole star.” more

Anna de Graaff, a researcher in Hans-Walter Rix's Galaxies and Cosmology (GC) department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, has been awarded one of the highly prestigious and well-funded grants from the European Research Council (ERC). Her project, entitled “Early Giants in Context: How could Galaxies Grow so Rapidly in the First Billion Years?”, will be funded with €1.5 million from an ERC Starting Grant starting in the summer of 2026. more