Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

A digital illustration shows the planet Beta Pic b as a dark sphere on the left, set against a bright light source on the right. A luminous dust disk stretches horizontally across the scene, standing out against the dark background. The composition emphasizes the cosmic setting through a prominent light source and a distinct dust structure.

Science highlight 6/2026: Young Giant Gas Planet Beta Pic b Refuses to Reveal its Origin

July 09, 2026 Results cast doubt on a seemingly reliable tool for inferring the origins of gas planets

MPIA News: Caroline Gieser Receives the Biermann Prize from the German Astronomical Society

Caroline Gieser, postdoctoral researcher in the Department Planet Formation and Exoplanets at MPIA, will be awarded the Ludwig Biermann Prize at the annual meeting of the German Astronomical Society (AG) in September.

Depiction of an active galaxy with a bright yellow-orange central region surrounded by a spiral cloud of dust and gas emitting two narrow jets from its center.

Science highlight 5/2026: Probing the host galaxy of one of the most distant quasars

July 06, 2026 The ESA space telescope Euclid has found a treasure trove of early quasars.

MPIA News: IAU PhD Award for Maximilian Häberle

July 02, 2026 Maximilian Häberle has been awarded the PhD Prize in the field of “Fundamental Astronomy” by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

An artistic depiction of an exoplanet in space against a black, sparsely starred background. The planet is positioned on the left side of the frame, featuring a textured, dark greenish-brown surface with cloud-like patterns. Its right hemisphere is illuminated by a nearby star, whose intensely bright white and yellow edge is visible on the far right. The planet's terminator line glows with a reddish-orange hue, caused by atmospheric scattering.

Science highlight 4/2026: From Dusk Till Dawn

June 10, 2026 Astronomers find variations between the morning and the evening conditions of an ultra-hot exoplanet.

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.

Science Highlight 3/2026: 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

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.

Science highlight 2/2026: Astronomers find an exo-Jupiter, and it seems to have clouds

April 22, 2026 Epsilon Indi Ab: A massive Jupiter with clouds made of water ice

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 highlight 2026: Euclid Space Warps – help spot galaxies bending spacetime

April 21, 2026 Germany’s role in preparing the citizen science project

Departments

Planet Formation and Exoplanets

We study the formation of stars on all scales and the birth of planetary systems and their evolution. The Department established observational programs to search for extrasolar planets and to…

Galaxies and Cosmology

Directly after the Big Bang, the universe was very simple and almost without structure. In the present universe, we see galaxies of various shapes and forms, aligned on an intricate weave of dark…

Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets

We are in the midst of a revolution in the study of extrasolar planets. Thousands of recent discoveries have revealed that planets are common — most stars host at least one — and they show much…

Emeritus Research Group

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Thomas K. Henning

Galactic Nuclei Group

Dr. Nadine Neumayer

Astrophysical Spectroscopy and Stellar Populations

Dr. Maria Bergemann

ExoWorlds Imaging

Dr. Gaël Chauvin

Public outreach

Astronomy for the Public

Astronomy is a fascinating subject, and the astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy see it as their responsibility to reach out to the general public, to teachers and pupils, and to the media.

Sterne und Weltraum

The magazine »Sterne und Weltraum« (Stars and Space) is the most widely circulated popular scientific astronomy magazine in the German-speaking countries. It was founded in Heidelberg over 60 years ago.

Videos

The Institute has produced a number of videos on various aspects of activities at MPIA. Among them are videos on astronomical research and instrumentation technology. Other videos feature the MPIA directors and provide information for the public.