The Max Planck Society has launched its Transatlantic Program to deepen collaboration with leading U.S. research institutions and strengthen opportunities for junior and senior scientists. Key elements of the program include: Opportunities for PhD candidates and postdocs through International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS), Max Planck Schools, graduate centers, and a new central postdoc program. [...]
An international team of astronomers has traced one of the brightest one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) ever observed - FRB 20250316A - to a galaxy 130 million light-years away. Using the Canadian CHIME radio telescope and its newly completed outrigger stations, the team localized the burst to a region just 45 light-years wide, the most [...]
For the first time, astronomers have directly tracked the transformation of a dying star over more than a century - revealing that it is heating up faster than any other typical star ever observed. The study, led by Professor Albert Zijlstra (The University of Manchester) and published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, examines 130 years [...]
Astronomers using ALMA have discovered a vast bubble of gas and dust surrounding the red supergiant star DFK 52 — the largest structure of its kind ever seen in the Milky Way. Containing as much mass as the Sun and stretching 1.4 light years across, the bubble was created by a dramatic stellar eruption about [...]
The 21 CentiMeter Array (21CMA), located in China’s Tianshan Mountains, has been officially recognised as an SKA pathfinder telescope by the SKA Observatory. Originally built in 2004–2006 and recently upgraded, 21CMA operates at 50–200 MHz, overlapping with the frequency range of SKA-Low. The array has collected over 3,000 terabytes of data and developed new digital [...]
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) may have caught a planet in the act of forming around the young star HD 135344B, about 440 light-years away. The planet candidate, estimated at twice Jupiter’s size, appears to be shaping striking spiral arms in the star’s protoplanetary disc - the first direct detection of its kind. [...]
An international team of astronomers has unveiled a stunning image of a cosmic jet aimed directly at Earth, revealing the long-sought explanation for the extraordinary brightness of the blazar PKS 1424+240. The discovery, published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, shows the blazar’s jet as a glowing “Eye of Sauron” in deep space - its [...]
An international team of astronomers, led by Dr Efthalia Traianou of Heidelberg University, has captured the most detailed image yet of the galaxy OJ 287, located five billion light years away. The groundbreaking observation reveals a sharply curved, ribbon-like plasma jet emerging from the galaxy’s core - a phenomenon never before seen in OJ 287. [...]