Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
Excellent Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics across wavelengths from (sub-)millimeter and infared all the way to X-ray and gamma-ray. Posts by Press Office.
mpe.mpg.de/impressum
- Astronomers win!🥳 Protest saves @eso.org #Paranal Observatory's dark skies from industrial project. #MPE director & #Nobel Laureate Reinhard Genzel leads successful fight to protect a unique site of world-class telescopes, including #VLT and the currently built #ELT. ➡️ www.mpe.mpg.de/8134359/news...
- Largest sulfur molecule ever detected in space may reveal clues to life’s origins. www.mpg.de/26040668/the... #astrophysics @mpe-garching.bsky.social
- A new study by #MPE researchers, using the #eROSITA telescope, shows the fastest-feeding #Quasars have the strongest X-ray flickering. The likely cause? Powerful winds blasting away from the #blackhole, acting like a 'cosmic curtain' that block our view. ➡️https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8130783/news20260121
- 👏Congratulations to Michaela Benthaus, who just became the first ever wheelchair user to travel to space! Back in early 2023, Michaela did an internship at #MPE. And now to see her go to space make us incredibly proud. Amazing achievement, Michi, and all the best for your future! Next stop Mars??😉
- Unveiling interstellar secrets! A science team including #MPE's Konrad Dennerl captured the first X-ray images of comet 3I/ATLAS using @esa.int #XMMNewton. This goes back to 1996 when the #ROSAT mission discovered that comets emit X-rays. Image: ESA/XMM-Newton/C. Lisse, S. Cabot & the XMM ISO Team
- Check out "The Year in Physics" 2025 by @quantamagazine.bsky.social, with #MPE scientist Hannah Übler, who received an #ERC Starting Grant in 2024. Using the #JWST, they found a lonely black hole in the early universe with a mass of 50 million suns! 🤯 ➡️ More: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPoQ...
- In 2025, we learned that dark energy is plausibly getting weaker and found new mysteries in the early universe. www.quantamagazine.org/the-year-in-...
- 👏Congratulations to #MPE-director Reinhard Genzel on receiving the Bavarian Constitutional Order! He received the award from Ilse Aigner in honor for his groundbreaking black hole research & dedication to science in Bavaria! ➡️ www.mpe.mpg.de/8116474/news... Photos: Bayerischer Landtag/Matthias Balk
- ⚠️Skies at Risk! ⚠️ #NobelPrize Laureate and #MPE director Genzel, along with 29 astronomers, have written an open letter to the Chilean government, urging them to protect @eso.org #Paranal Observatory from light pollution & vibrations from the proposed INNA complex. ➡️ www.mpe.mpg.de/8115723/news...
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- 🤩The @4most-eu.bsky.social (#4MOST) facility on @eso.org VISTA telescope in Chile achieved first light. #MPE scientists played a leading role in developing the Operations System, enabling to link #eROSITA’s X-ray universe with large-scale structure of galaxies. ➡️ More: www.mpe.mpg.de/8102833/news...
- 🏃🏃♀️🏃♂️Fast, faster, #MPE! With two teams, a group of MPE scientists participated in the #MunichMarathon 2025. On the left team "eRunita" - a neologism of "run" and #eROSITA -, and on the right the "WFI DEPFET Fliers", named after the #NewAthena #WFI. Great Performance, guys! 👏🥇
- “I’m proud of my team – our work is read all around the world.” Huge congratulations to Ewine van Dishoeck! Named Citation Laureate 2025 by Clarivate for groundbreaking astrochemistry research. Her discoveries reshape how we understand the birth of stars & planets.
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- We're excited to welcome you soon at #MPE, @suchitra.bsky.social! 🤗
- Double Congratulations for @mpe-garching.bsky.social #MPE! The German Astronomical Society (AG) honors two of our researchers with prestigious awards: Prof. Dr. Paola Caselli receives the Karl Schwarzschild Medal and Dr. Frank Grupp is honored with the Instrument Development Award. (1/3)
- 🤯Major milestone for #MICADO! The 5-ton cryostat - core of the 6m camera - arrived at #MPE. It keeps optics & detectors at ~82 K 🥶 to enable precise infrared observations for @eso.org Extremely Large Telescope #ELT. More about MICADO: lnkd.in/e5qVq6tY Video: Federico Biondi/MPE.
- Impressions from the #b2run 2025. A total of ~ 300 runners from all Munich #MaxPlanck Institutes and @maxplanck.de participated, 40 of them from #MPE alone! 💪 One "Extraterrestrial"👽finished in 35th place - out of 30.000 runners! #b2runmünchen #gemeinsamfit Photos: Felix Dickfeld/MPE; Jan Greune
- 🥳 Congratulations to @terevaldivia.bsky.social, who has been awarded both the prestigious #OttoHahnMedal and the #OttoHahnAward by @maxplanck.de for her outstanding dissertation! In this Interview she talks about her research, the award ceremony and her future work: www.mpe.mpg.de/8076532/news...
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- Germany’s new Federal Minister for Research, Technology, and Space, @dorobaer.bsky.social visited #MPE. She talked to MPE directors Reinhard Genzel, Kirpal Nandra and Frank Eisenhauer and visited #MICADO, a pioneering instrument for the upcoming #ELT being currently built in Chile by @eso.org.
- #MPE & Kavli Institute for #Astronomy & #Astrophysics (KIAA) at Beijing University are happy to announce the launch of a new @maxplanck.de Max Planck partner group. The collaboration will be led by Dr. Jinyi Shangguan, researcher at KIAA and former postdoc at MPE. ➡️ www.mpe.mpg.de/8059933/news...
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- The first data from @esa.int @ec-euclid.bsky.social #Euclid mission is here - with stunning insights! It's a major step forward to understand #DarkMatter and #DarkEnergy — and yet only the beginning of an adventure - where #MPE is right in the middle of it! Read more: www.mpe.mpg.de/8059041/news...
- Science meets Diplomacy: Federal President Steinmeier & #MPE Director Reinhard Genzel call for relocating a planned industrial plant that threatens observations at @eso.org Paranal Observatory. With #Gravity+ & #MICADO, MPE is heavily involved in this research there. www.mpe.mpg.de/8055297/news...
- A rare celestial duo! Using Widefield X-ray Telescope WXT of #EinsteinProbe, an international team, including #MPE scientists Chandreyee Maitra & Haonan Yang detected an X-ray outburst from a rare Be star–white dwarf system in the Small #MagellanicCloud. ➡️https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8054370/news20250228
- Important milestone for #MICADO, first-light instrument of @eso.org #ELT! The De-rotator was mounted onto the support structure. The next big step will then be installing the cryostat. Learn more about ELT's Super Camera, which is built and designed under #MPE leadership: www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/micado
- 😱A Giant in the Cosmos! #MPE & #MPP Scientists have discovered the largest ever measured #superstructure in the nearby #universe, spanning 1.4 billion #lightyears! Made mostly of #DarkMatter, this cosmic giant reshapes our understanding of large-scale structures. ➡️ www.mpe.mpg.de/8053119/news...
- As part of an #Erasmus program, students from schools in Ochsenhausen (🇩🇪), Maastricht (🇳🇱), Hlucin (🇨🇿), Moncalieri (🇮🇹) and Montarnaud (🇫🇷) visited #MPE last week. They learned a lot about the search for #exoplanets and built their own #spectrograph with 3D-printed parts. It was great having you! 🤗🤩
- Last week, 70 participants from various institutions of #Euclid Consortium @ec-euclid.bsky.social met at #MPE. They discussed the general status of the mission & first galaxy clustering measurements. The meeting's outcome will be crucial for preparing the first data release, expected for late 2026.
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