Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik

A cosmic Game of Hide and Seek 🙈 👀 Disks around planets are such a common association that even the planet emoji has one: 🪐 But the belt of the young star WISPIT is different! ⭐ Scientists of the MPE, in collaboration with an international team, have found not one, but two young planets currently forming within it. Despite its young age, WISPIT 2B is a big one, with about five times the mass of Jupiter. Its sibling, WISPIT 2C, is even two times bigger! Before being identified as a planet, WISPIT 2C was visible only as an indistinct blob that could have been anything – from a dust cloud to nothing more than an image artifact. The inherent properties of interferometry and the GRAVITY instrument allow it to resolve details at a very high resolution. Combined with its extreme Adaptive Optics, which allowed the scientists to reject the starlight that outshines wee Wispit 2C by a factor of 1000, made it possible to see 2C as what it really is – a young planet. 🔭 A Spectrum of the planet also reveals Carbon Monoxide molecules in its atmosphere - a clear tracer of its formation pathway! 🌍 Combined, these systems are real laboratories for planet formation scenarios. This combination is done with GRAVITY+ and is unique worldwide! Literally, no similar interferometer exists. A prime example of how technological innovation can drive scientific breakthroughs! ⚙️ 🧠 Click the Link for all the fascinating details: https://s.mpe.mpg.de/ssiaz   *We astronomers are world-class at naming things, aren’t we?

Life without a sun? Impossible! Or not... 🪐☀️ Orbiting a sun seems essential for the development of life as we know it. But new research from MPE and LMU suggests that moons of free-floating planets can keep their oceans liquid for up to 4.3 billion years through dense hydrogen atmospheres and tidal heating. That means that similar conditions that have allowed life to develop here on Earth, could be present long enough for complex life to develop elsewhere - even without orbiting a sun. Life might not just circle stars. It could wander the galaxy 🌍✨ Read the whole article here for all the fascinating details: https://s.mpe.mpg.de/8gst1 #Astrobiology #Exomoons #SpaceScience

Happy International Women's Day! #InternationalWomensDay #WomenInScience #WomenInSTEM #Astrophysics #MaxPlanck #MPE

Congratulations Iuliia Grotova! 👏 🎉 💫

The Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) is honored to welcome Nobel Laureate Professor Reinhard Genzel for his lecture on "Galaxies and Black Holes" on March 3 at 7:00 p.m. Professor Genzel was awarded The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020 together with the American astronomer Andrea Ghez for their groundbreaking research on the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Professor Genzel is Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik and Honorary Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The event is part of the CAS Research Focus "New Cosmology" and of the CAS Showcase series, in which LMU scientists discuss the state of the art in their discipline. Registration and further information: https://lnkd.in/dCU4Q9HA Venue: Professor-Huber-Platz 2 Room W 201 80539 Munich

Munich Astronomers have captured and modelled an exceptionally rare gravitationally lensed supernova — nicknamed SN Winny — that could open a new, independent way to measure how fast the universe expands. 🌌 Using the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, the team confirmed five distinct images of this distant explosion — a cosmic firework caused by the bending of light from two foreground galaxies. “The results clearly confirm that the fifth image is real and has the same colour as the other four,” says Roberto Saglia (MPE). “These precise positions now allow us to build a detailed mass model of the lens — a crucial step toward measuring the Hubble constant independently.” Leon Roman Ecker (LMU/MPE) points out that: "It is the only known strongly lensed superluminous supernova — offering a unique opportunity to probe the expansion of the universe with unprecedented precision." This discovery, achieved together with colleagues from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München , the Max Planck Institute  for Astrophysics, and Technische Universität München, marks an important milestone in addressing the long-standing Hubble tension. 🔗 Learn more: bit.ly/4tLRiHN High-resolution image taken with the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona, USA, displaying the two lens galaxies in a warm tone, and the five lensed copies of SN Winny in blue. © Credit: SN Winny Research Group #Supernova #CosmicExpansion #Astrophysics #HubbleConstant #Cosmology #MaxPlanck #MPE

🌀 Supermassive black hole heartbeat – with surprising mini-flares Astronomers uncovered complex X-ray eruptions from supermassive black hole eRASSt J2344 – the most luminous tidal disruption event found by SRG/eROSITA. Einstein Probe + XMM-Newton reveal quasi-periodic eruptions every 12 hours, plus unprecedented shorter, hotter mini-flares – challenging models of matter near supermassive black holes. Led by MPE/ IMPRS on Astrophysics PhD student Pietro Baldini. 🔭 Einstein Probe (launched 2024) opens new discovery space for transient X-ray phenomena. 👉 Full story + cosmic ECG: bit.ly/MPE-J2344-heartbeat #BlackHoles #XrayAstronomy #EinsteinProbe #eROSITA #Astrophysics #imprsonastrophysics #MPE

International Day of Women and Girls in Science! At European Southern Observatory Supernova in Garching, "#MPE’s Women in Astronomy" spotlighted Prof. Dr. Dominika Wylezalek (Universität Heidelberg & Astronomisches Rechen-Institut #ARI) with her inspiring public talk “Black Holes and the Cosmic Web of Galaxies — A Journey Through Space and Time.” ✨ #WomenInScience #WomenInSTEM #MaxPlanck #esosupernova #BlackHoles #CosmicWeb #Astronomy