Conferences

Stone castle juxtaposed with a galaxy and a blue digital grid, blending history and science.

The multiscale environment of AGN across cosmic time

Nov 23 - Nov 28 2025
Schloss Ringberg, Tegernsee (Germany)
Advancements in instrumentation and the development of new facilities have enabled the study of AGN with unprecedented detail, ranging from their nuclear engines to their host galaxies, halos, and large-scale megaparsec environments. The conference will convene leading experts from diverse career stages, representing observational and theoretical perspectives on each of the distinct scales surrounding AGN.
Nov 10 - Nov 14 2025
Schloss Ringberg, Tegernsee (Germany)
Stars and their final explosions are of pivotal importance for the evolution of the universe as producers of heavy chemical elements and as birth sites of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, which play a role as sources of gravitational waves and as important laboratories for nuclear, neutrino, and beyond-standard-model particle physics.
Nov 2-7, 2025
A wide range of astrophysical systems are multiphase. Gas phases at vastly different temperatures are co-spatial, interact with each other, and often lie at the core of understanding the matter and energy flows determining the dynamics of those systems.
20 – 21 Oct 2025
ESA's PLATO space mission is in the final assembly stage before its launch. Its core science program covers time domain astronomy for exoplanets and stellar oscillations.  A call for proposals for its Open Time Program is anticipated for spring 2026.
If you are keen to explore whether PLATO can be used for your brilliant ideas in time-domain astronomy, but you are not very familiar with its instrumentation yet, then this workshop is for you.  Our team and fellow participants will work with you to prepare and test your ideas in a welcoming and collaborative atmosphere, helping you get ready to write a successful proposal. 
Nov 5-7 2024

We are pleased to invite you to the Astrophysics Working Group Meeting. This meeting will be conducted in a hybrid format, allowing for both in-person and virtual participation. The in-person sessions will be hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) in Garching, Germany.
Line-Intensity mapping (LIM) is a novel technique to map cosmological volumes which allows to access unexplored regimes and unique cosmological and astrophysical information. The workshop “Present and Future of Line-Intensity Mapping”, which will take place on April 18-21 at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, in Garching, Germany, will cover the study of the final stages of reionization, cosmic noon and low redshift with LIM (i.e., z <~ 10). Special emphasis will be put on the challenges (instrumental, observational and theoretical) that need to be addressed to fulfill LIM's potential and turn this technique into a mature cosmological and astrophysical probe.
We are happy to announce that the next VFTS meeting will take place between the 27-29 of March 2023 at MPA in Garching by Munich. This is a closed meeting open to members of the VFTS collaboration and those who have received a personal invitation.
26 February - 3 March, 2023
5 October 2022
The main goal of the workshop is to connect scientists within the Munich community that work on Lyman lines (both emission and absorption; Lyman-alpha, Lyman-beta, …) and Lyman continuum - so called Lyman-X, and to spark a discussion for future collaborations.
2. - 5.11. 2021
Schloss Ringberg, Tegernsee (Germany)

This meeting is the 20th in the series of Nuclear Astrophysics Workshops on Ringberg Castle. As in previous workshops, the goal is to bring together scientists from nuclear astrophysics, galactic evolution, and stellar and supernova theory and observations.

Inward Bound: Bulges from high redshifts to the Milky Way

23-27 November 2020, ESO
16–19 December 2019 at MPA, Garching

This is the third of the “B-mode from Space” workshop series. The purpose of the workshop is to discuss the science goals, status of CMB polarization projects, foregrounds and mission design, technologies and challenges for the space-borne observations of CMB polarization. The synergies with ground-based/balloon and other cosmological experiments/surveys will be discussed.

3-5 Oktober 2019, Harnack House, Berlin

The goal of this meeting is to bring together a focused group of experts (~40, see below) who are actively working on the circumgalactic medium, from both the theoretical and observational perspectives, to discuss recent advances.
Bayesian Imaging Meets Radio Reality II

Bayesian Imaging Meets Radio Reality II

5-9 August 2019

25. - 30.3. 2019
Schloss Ringberg, Tegernsee (Germany)

This meeting is the 19th in the series of Nuclear Astrophysics Workshops on Ringberg Castle. As in previous workshops, the goal is to bring together scientists from nuclear astrophysics, galactic evolution, and stellar and supernova theory and observations.
19-23 November 2018, Lorentz Center, Leiden (NL) Accurate and precise stellar masses, and by implication ages, are not only critical for Galactic archaeology but also for many other fields in astrophysics, from exoplanets studies to the understanding of advanced stages of stellar evolution. The main aim of this workshop is to bring together participants from several fields to discuss and compare the different mass determination techniques used for different types of stars, confront the strengths and weaknesses of all methods, and establish the required level of precision for a wide range of applications.
15-17 October 2018, MPA

The focus of this meeting lies on discussing science results obtained in analysing IllustrisTNG, but some topics beyond these simulations will also be discussed, both from an observational and theoretical perspective.
8-10 October 2018

A Joint Workshop of the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany
23-27 July 2018 at the Harnack-Haus, Berlin

The field of large-scale structure (LSS) is rapidly evolving, and becoming increasingly technical and specialized. At the same time, there is high demand for a new generation of cosmologists to develop model predictions and exploit the upcoming data sets from galaxy surveys. This school aims to provide a focused, in-depth training for this purpose.
15-20 July 2018

An informal workshop within the D-MeerKAT and D-LOFAR projects.
31 Jan - 1 Feb 2018 at MPA, Garching

We are entering new era of the cosmic microwave background research. Rapid progress in large-scale instrumentation will make it possible to achieve unprecedented sensitivity in microwave band measurements over a large fraction of the sky. There exist great opportunities worldwide: CMB S4 for the ground-based efforts, and LiteBIRD for space, to mention two examples.
Oct 25-27 at MPA Garching

The meeting will take place at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Garching (Munich) from October 25 to 27, 2017
July 24-28, 2017, Ringberg Castle

The systematic observational hunt for electromagnetic transients has revealed a growing diversity of supernova types and explosion-related phenomena...
March 14-19, 2016, Ringberg Castle
June 15-17, 2015, Garching
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