News

Here you can find latest news and event announcements of the AIP. Older news can be browsed in the News archive.

Sept. 19, 2024

Speed dating with science. Appointments can be booked now.

The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “videowissen” from Thursday, 19th September 2024.

To mark the Day of Open Monuments, the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) invited visitors to the Telegrafenberg on September 8, 2024. The focus was on the Einstein Tower, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year.

With the help of machine learning, a team at the AIP has made a surprising discovery. Based on data from the Gaia mission, a large number of ancient stars with similar orbits to our sun have been discovered.

The next talk of the Virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) on the topic “News from the solar neighbourhood" (German) by Dr. Ralf-Dieter Scholz will be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life) from Thursday, 18. July 2024.

Newly identified, extremely fast-moving stars in the star cluster Omega Centauri provide solid evidence for a black hole in its centre. With at least 8200 solar masses this is the first intermediate-mass black hole reliably observed to date. The study was published in the journal Nature.

The joint project PICS4SENS by the Leibniz Institutes AIP and IHP in cooperation with the innoFSPEC transfer laboratory at the University of Potsdam will be funded over a period of four years with a total of 3,4 million euros, 2.2 million euros of which will go to the AIP.

Yesterday, the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) had the honor of welcoming Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand and her delegation to the Babelsberg campus. The aim of the visit was to discuss possible collaboration areas between the AIP and the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) and to promote possible joint research projects.

On June 16, 2024, the President of Nepal, Ram Chandra Paudel, visited the research institutes on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam.

On 21 January 2024, an asteroid struck Ribbeck near Nauen in Brandenburg. Dr Jürgen Rendtel from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) was one of the meteorite searchers and found some fragments himself. In his lecture, which will be broadcast from Thursday, 20 June 2024 on the YouTube channel “Urknall, Weltall und das Leben” (Big Bang, Universe and Life), he reports on the discovery, the search for the fragments and the peculiarities of the meteorite (in German).

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has signed an agreement for the design and construction of ANDES, the ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph. The ANDES instrument will be installed on ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

Detection of magnetic massive stars outside our galaxy. The publication by Dr Swetlana Hubrig reports on the first discovery of magnetic fields in three massive, hot stars in the neighbouring galaxies Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

More news are available in the News archive.