Stellar News

Massive stars often reside in multiple star systems, therefore it is expected that mergers of their final stages, neutron stars or black holes, contribute significantly to gravitational wave sources. A team at MPA has now studied the evolution of millions of quadruple star systems and estimated that a significant fraction of the black hole – black hole mergers detected by LIGO come from such multiple star systems rather than simple binaries. more

The Partner Group of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics at Kyambogo University in Uganda will be led by MPA scientist Dr. Benard Nsamba. The Max Planck Society will support the partner group for up to a period of five years with 20,000 Euros every year. With these funds, Dr. Nsamba will build a research group in Astrophysics at Kyambogo University in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, covering expenses for travel, workshops, doctoral students and postdocs as well as minor equipment. more

Today, the German Astronomical Society announced that Hans-Thomas Janka will receive the Karl Schwarzschild Medal, the most prestigious prize in Germany in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. The medal honours his research on the core-collapse supernova mechanism, explosive nucleosynthesis, and supernova neutrino physics. more

During this year’s summer barbeque, MPA student Pavan Vynatheya was distinguished with the Kippenhahn Award for his paper on “How Important is Secular Evolution for Black Hole and Neutron Star Mergers in 2+2 and 3+1 Quadruple-star Systems?” more

Two types of hot, blue and dense stars that show peculiar characteristics in their composition and vibrations have posed a challenge to astrophysicists for more than a decade. A team of scientists from MPA and La Plata in Argentina, has now been able to explain both types as a product of very similar merger events. In particular, the scientists think that the peculiar hot and blue stars are formed by the merger of two white dwarfs. more

The bubbling surface of massive giant stars causes their observable positions on the sky to wobble. An international team of astrophysicists has now performed detailed simulations of the gas motions in the atmospheric layers of these stars and compared these with high-quality data of the Perseus stellar cluster. They find that the surface structures could indeed account for a large part of the measurement uncertainty in the observations. more

Both in her research and her hobbies, Deepika Bollimpalli, is always in motion. more