Detailed observations of the quasar 3C 273 with the GRAVITY instrument have revealled the structure of rapidly moving gas around the central super-massive black hole. Studying these black holes and determining their masses is an essential ingredient to understanding galaxy evolution in general.
The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg is one of about 80 institutes of the Max Planck Society. Scientists here use computer simulations and observations to study the formation of planets and stars, investigate the structure of our Milky Way system and the evolution of other distant galaxies in a cosmological context.
Video with Thomas Henning and Markus Feldt produced by Klaus Jäger about the remarkable instrument SPHERE (Spectro - Polarimetric High- contrast Exo -planet REsearch) at the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. (Movie in German, an English version will follow)
Capturing direct images of exoplanets is one of the biggest challenges in observational…