Code of Conduct
Press releases
Virtual Babelsberg Starry Night on 18 February
The next lecture of the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will be broadcast on Thursday, 18 February 2021 on the YouTube channel "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben". Please note that the lecture will be given in German.
Virtual Babelsberg Starry Night on 21 January
The next lecture of the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will be broadcast on Thursday, 21 January 2021 on the YouTube channel "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben". Please note that the lecture will be given in German.
Virtual Babelsberg Starry Night on 17 December
The next lecture of the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will be broadcasted on Thursday, 17 December 2020 on the YouTube channel "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben". Please note that the lecture will be given in German.
Virtual Babelsberg Starry Night on 13 December - Christmas Edition
A special edition of the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will be broadcasted on the third Advent, 13 December 2020 at 7.p.m., on the YouTube channel "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben". Please note that the lecture will be given in German.
On the trail of 1.8 billion stars
3 December 2020. Spanning a period of 34 months, the ESA Gaia mission has now published the first part of its third data release (EDR3). It provides the most precise measurements of positions and motions of 1.8 billion objects across the sky. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is strongly involved in the Gaia data reduction and is one of the official Gaia Partner Data Centres that host a mirror of the complete Gaia archive.
With 35,000 eyes in the sky: world's largest fibre spectrograph completed
2 December 2020. Astronomers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), together with colleagues from Germany and the US, have completed an astronomical spectrograph that is capable of creating the largest map of the cosmos.
Gaia New Data Release
A first part of the third Gaia data catalogue will be published on Thursday 3 December 2020. By then, entries for 1.8 billion sources will be available.
Grant for research on satellite galaxies
27 November 2020. Dr Marcel Pawlowski from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) receives funding in the Leibniz competition to establish a junior research group dedicated to the motion and distribution of satellite galaxies of our Milky Way and other galaxies.
Virtual Babelsberg Starry Night on 19 November
The next lecture of the virtual Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will be broadcasted on Thursday, 19 November 2020 on the YouTube channel "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben". Please note that the lecture will be given in German.
Excellent Handiwork
13 November 2020. For many years, precision mechanics have been trained in the precision engineering workshop of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) according to the principles of the Chamber of Crafts. Now Leander Leibnitz, an apprentice of the AIP, has won the victory in the German crafts competition in the state of Brandenburg.
First observations: Fifth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
3 November 2020. The groundbreaking all-sky survey collected its very first observations of the cosmos. It will increase the understanding of formation and evolution of galaxies like our Milky Way. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is a full member of the SDSS consortium.
Protective layer: Magnetic field of the Jellyfish galaxy JO206
26 October 2020. Gas tails give them their jellyfish-like appearance: So-called jellyfish galaxies are difficult to study because of their low brightness. An international research team has now gained new insights into the physical conditions prevailing in the gas tail of these galaxies.
New study verifies prediction from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
23 October 2020. An international research team has used observational data and simulations to determine the redshift in the Sun's gravitational field with unprecedented accuracy. This effect, predicted by Einstein, was the reason for constructing a solar telescope at the beginning of the 1920s, capable of measuring the spectrum of the Sun: the Einstein Tower in Potsdam.
Call for Nominations for 2021 Wempe Award
13 October 2020. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, Germany (AIP) welcomes nominations and applications for the Johann Wempe Award 2021.
New Season of Babelsberg Starry Nights starts online
On Thursday, 15 October 2020, the Babelsberg Starry Nights of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) will begin again. For the time being, the popular lecture series will not take place on the research campus in Babelsberg, but will be hosted on the YouTube channel "Urknall, Weltall und das Leben". Please note that the lectures will be given in German.
Search for traces of microplastics in humans: New joint research project funded
5 October 2020. The PlasMark project, which has been awarded 4.5 million Euros by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will start in October 2020 with the aim of investigating the consequences of microplastics in the human body. Methods from astrophysics will be applied.
Historical Sky: Half a century of Potsdam solar research digitally accessible
23 September 2020. As part of the large-scale digitization project APPLAUSE, digitized photographic plates have recently become available online, with images of the sun taken between 1943 and 1991 at the Einstein Tower Solar Observatory in Potsdam.
Cosmic dance: A solution to the Galactic bar paradox
25 August 2020. The very heart of our Milky Way harbours a large bar-like structure of stars whose size and rotational speed have been strongly contested in the last years. A new study has found an elegant solution to the discrepancies found in different observational studies, using the fact that the bar and spiral arms move at different rotational velocities, encountering each other about every 80 Million years. As the faster-rotating bar approaches a spiral arm, it appears to be much longer and their ongoing mutual attraction due to gravity periodically varies both their rotational speeds.
Mysterious dimming of Betelgeuse: Dust clearing up
13 August 2020. Between October 2019 and February 2020 the brightness of the star Betelgeuse has dropped by more than a factor of three. New observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the robotic STELLA telescope of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) now provide an explanation for the phenomenon.
First images of the Sun from Solar Orbiter
16 July 2020. Solar Orbiter, a mission of the space agencies ESA and NASA, publishes for the first time images that show our home star as close as never before. Prior to this, the test phase of all instruments was successfully completed.
