News at MPA

An international team of astronomers has found a low mass dark object in the distant Universe, not by directly observing any emitted light, but by detecting its tiny gravitational distortion of the light from another distant galaxy. This mysterious object has a mass of about one million times that of our Sun, and its discovery seems consistent with the current best theory about how galaxies like our own Milky Way formed. more

A new study led by Dr. Alankar Dutta at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics uncovers why cold gas clouds fail to thrive in powerful winds flowing out of galaxies driven by supernovae. These findings, soon to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, challenge long standing assumptions about how galaxies exchange matter with their surroundings.
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By Prof. Conny Aerts, KU Leuven, Belgium more

During the MPA garden party, the Rudolf-Kippenhahn-Prize for the best scientific paper written in the past year by a student at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics was awarded to two students: Silvia Almada Monter for “Crossing walls and windows: the curious escape of Lyman-α photons through ionized channels” and Christian Partmann for “The importance of nuclear star clusters for massive black hole growth and nuclear star formation in simulated low-mass galaxies”. The prize is awarded to recognize originality, a large impact on science but also the quality of writing for a publication to which students themselves made substantial contributions. more

In the first study of its kind, researchers at the RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) in Japan, together with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) and the Flatiron Institute, used machine learning — a form of artificial intelligence — to significantly speed up the processing time to simulate the evolution of galaxies coupled with supernova explosions. This approach could help us to understand the origins of our own galaxy and, in particular, the elements essential for life in the Milky Way. more

The first images from the observatory will be published on 23 June 2025 at 17:00 CEST. Researchers from the Max Planck Society report on their planned research more

Astronomical images not only look beautiful, they also provide a wealth of information. What's behind it and what distinguishes four prominent telescopes? An overview. more