In September 2019 a new Max Planck Research Group started at MPA: Adrian Hamers joined the institute and is currently building up his group to research multiple star systems. Such systems are of high importance in astrophysics, since they may lead to violent astrophysical phenomena such as Type Ia supernovae and gravitational wave events. The main goal is to use both fast and detailed modeling to make statistical predictions for observations of supernovae and gravitational waves. more

Order emerging from chaos more

The High-Performance Computing Center, Stuttgart (HLRS), has awarded MPA researcher Dylan Nelson and his colleague Annalisa Pillepich at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy the “Golden Spike Award” for TNG50: a high-resolution simulation of galaxy evolution from the Big Bang to the present day. The Gold Spike award honours the three most excellent projects of that year that have performed computations on the center’s clusters. more

Simulation, originally developed for cosmology, shows that a strong magnetic field is indeed produced in the merger of two stars more

Astronomers measure the expansion of the universe with the help of gravitational lenses more

The expansion rate of the Universe today is described by the so-called Hubble constant and different techniques have come to inconsistent results about how fast our Universe actually does expand. An international team led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) has now used two gravitational lenses as new tools to calibrate the distances to hundreds of observed supernovae and thus measure a fairly high value for the Hubble constant. While the uncertainty is still relatively large, this is higher than that inferred from the cosmic microwave background. more

The SRG (Spektr-RG) Orbital Observatory has recently started one of its many tests by looking at a small patch of the extragalactic sky with one of the seven eROSITA telescope modules. The results are consistent with preflight expectations. The work on commissioning other modules is still underway and will be completed in the coming weeks before starting a 4-year long all-sky survey later this year. more