The 2012 Johann Wempe Award is awarded to Prof. Dr. Thomas R. Ayres from the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy of the University of Colorado, Boulder, U.S.A. for his contributions to ultraviolet stellar spectroscopy and his detection of COmospheres.

Analysing data from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes an international team of astronomers around Tanya Urrutia from AIP has caught sight of luminous quasars igniting after galaxies collide. Quasars are bright, energetic regions around giant, active black holes in galactic centers.

How can we use new photonic technologies to promote astronomy? That is the main question of this year’s Summer School, which will be held in Schloss Wiesenburg in Brandenburg. It is the first conference worldwide to promote the issue of astrophotonics: the application of photonics to astronomy.

Cecilia Scannapieco, currently working at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), is awarded with the Ludwig Biermann Award of the Astronomische Gesellschaft (AG). The award ceremony takes place in Hamburg on September 25, 2012.

Astronomers in Germany have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm to help them chart and explain the structure and dynamics of the universe around us. The team, led by Francisco Kitaura of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, report their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has decided that the main-belt Asteroid 278513 is from now on called "Schwope".

About one hundred scientists from all over the world participate in the 9th Thinkshop of the AIP: "Galaxy surveys using Integral Field Spectroscopy; achievements and opportunities".

Dr. Federico Spada is awarded with the Karl Schwarzschild Fellowship 2012.

Spectroscopic imaging of the corona based on new-technology equipment - LOFAR (the LOw Frequency ARray) and solar applications.

Start-up management seminar: final results presentation.

Scientists have proved the existence of a magnetic effect that could explain why solar-like stars spin very slowly at the end of their lifetime.

The proposal "The Small Scale Structure of the Universe" for Supercomputer Time by Stefan Gottlöber from AIP was now highlighted as Excellence Project 2012 by the John von Neumann Institute for Computing. The proposal is part of the CLUES - Constrained Local UniversE Simulations - project.

After ten years of development, the new German solar telescope GREGOR will start operating at the Spanish Observatorio del Teide of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias on Tenerife. It is the largest solar telescope in Europe and number three worldwide. It will provide the German and the international community of solar physicists with new and better instrumentation which will enable them to investigate our home star in unprecedented detail.

Meetu Verma is honored with the Publication Award for young scientists awarded on 10 May 2012 by the 16th Leibniz Kolleg Potsdam. She earned it for three publications about velocity fields on the surface of the sun, which were published in the referred journals Astronomy & Astrophysics and Astronomical Notes.

Latest optics for the PEPSI spectrograph at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT).

Astronomers find a new type of variable star in a double star system.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) today announced the most accurate measurements yet of the distances to galaxies in the faraway universe, giving an unprecedented look at the time when the universe first began to accelerate. From different perspectives six publications, which have been published online now, address the question of “Dark Energy“, the unknown force that drives our Universe apart.

Astronomers have detected a mysterious ring of carbon monoxide gas around the young star V1052 Cen, which is about 700 light years away in the southern constellation Centaurus. The ring is part of the star’s planet-forming disk, and it’s as far from V1052 Cen as Earth is from the sun. Discovered with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, its edges are uniquely crisp.

In the current issue of "Nature Communications" from Dec 06, 2011 physical chemists at University Potsdam and astrophysicists at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in collaboration with colleagues from Sydney / Australia describe their latest results obtained within the ASPIC consortium (Astrophotonics and Instrumentation Consortium): a complex multi-notch optical filter that allows for observations of faint stars and galaxies by suppression of bright infrared night sky.

On 30 November 2011 the light installation “eL” lighted up for the first time at the Art Basel Miami Beach. The 2.7 meter high chandelier was developed and realised by a cooperation of Astrophysicist Noam Libeskind, his father, American architect Daniel Libeskind and Zumtobel, an international supplier of integral lighting solutions.