MICADO is one of the three first instruments for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), Europe’s next-generation ground-based telescope for optical and infrared wavelengths which is currently under construction at the ESO site at Cerro Armazones in Chile. This video introduces the instrument and the scientific goals it pursues.More information in the…
METIS is one of the three first instruments for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), Europe’s next-generation ground-based telescope for optical and infrared wavelengths which is currently under construction at the ESO site at Cerro Armazones in Chile. This video introduces the instrument and the scientific goals it pursues.More information in the…
Opening event of the travelling exhibition “Our biggest eye in space” by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Haus der Astronomie about the James Webb Space Telescope – live from the Planetarium Mannheim, the first station of the exhibition. Keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Thomas Henning from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy will report…
In this talk, Markus Pössel takes stock of the universe. The reference value is the total energy (which, according to Einstein's famous formula, includes the total mass): How large a fraction of the universe is in the form of planets? Of stars? Of intergalactic plasma? The result is a quantitative table of contents of our cosmos. And we ourselves…
MPIA Project Managers for METIS Silvia Scheithauer and Markus Feldt answer new questions about the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), including METIS and Adaptive Optics.
We also call particularly large numbers “astronomical” in everyday life. Astronomical numbers – the number of stars in a galaxy or even in the observable universe, or distance ratios in space – push our intuitive understanding to its limits. In this talk, Markus Pössel explores examples of astronomical numbers, the limits of visualisations of huge…
Basic astronomical knowledge is already known from the Stone Age through burial rites and calendar structures. It should therefore come as no surprise that such knowledge was used for the purpose of navigation early on – demonstrably at least since the end of the Bronze Age. The lecture will show with some examples how different peoples throughout…
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planets – planets that do not orbit our sun but a distant star – almost 30 years have passed and we have learned a lot about the diversity of these distant worlds. But what methods are used to find and study not only hot Jupiters or sub-Neptunes but also super-Earths and Earth-like planets?
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is one of the most important representations in astronomy: if the luminosity of stars and their temperature are plotted together, they are arranged in characteristic areas of the diagram. Most of them lie on the so-called main sequence, for which hot stars are particularly bright and cooler stars rather faint, and in…
When particularly massive stars reach the end of their lives, they explode in an extremely energetic supernova. After this spectacular show, usually only a dark, compact object remains – a black hole. According to calculations, there should be several million such "ex-stars" in the Milky Way – but we have only found a handful so far. In my lecture…
The temperatures on the newly discovered exoplanet Wolf 1069b and other possibly habitable planets permit liquid water. In this lecture, I will discuss what else is needed for the emergence of life according to current knowledge, how we can find exoplanets today and in the future, and how they were formed.
Our sun is yellow. Even with the naked eye you can see: some bright stars like Aldebaran or Betelgeuse are orange-red. In photos of the starry sky, many distinctly bluish stars can also be seen. However, there do not seem to be any green stars –why is that?
