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“The data corresponding to the hundred galaxies included in the first data release of November 2012 have already been downloaded more than seven thousand times and they have produced a wide variety of results, both from inside and outside the CALIFA collaboration" underlines Sebastián Sánchez, principal investigator of the project. "With more than thirty peer review publications, more than hundred contributions to scientific meetings and five PhD theses submitted, this project is the most productive among those ever carried out at Calar Alto. This data release is a new milestone of the project, which already can be considered an international reference in the field of extragalactic surveys”.

The CALIFA Project allows not only to inspect the galaxies in detail, but it also provides with data on the evolution of each particular galaxy with time.

Thanks to the CALIFA data, the astronomers have been able to deduce the history of the mass, luminosity and chemical evolution of the CALIFA sample of galaxies, and thus they have found that more massive galaxies grow faster than less massive ones, and that they form their central regions before the external ones (inside-out mass assembly). CALIFA has also shed light on how chemical elements needed for file are produced within the galaxies or on the physical processes involved on galactic collisions, and it has even observed the last generation of stars still in their birth cocoon.

The above picture shows:  1) broad band images (center up), 2) stellar mass surface densities (upper right), 3) average stellar ages (lower right), 4) diagnostic emission lines (lower center), 5) Halpha emission (lower left) and 6) kinematics (upper left). (Credits: R. Garcia-Benito, F. Rosales-Ortega, E. Pérez, C. J. Walcher, S. F. Sanchez and the CALIFA team)

• 2nd CALIFA data release

Science contact: Dr. Jakob Walcher, +49 331-7499 243, jwalcher@aip.de
Media contact: Kerstin Mork , +49 331-7499 469, presse@aip.de

The key topics of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) are cosmic magnetic fields and extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aim at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. Since 1992 the AIP is a member of the Leibniz Association.

Matthias Steinmetz studied mathematics and physics in Saarbrücken and at the Technical University Munich. He received his doctorate in physics in Munich in 1993 and initially worked at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. In 1996, aged 30, Matthias Steinmetz accepted a faculty position at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In 2002, he was appointed director of the AIP and professor at the University of Potsdam. Steinmetz was also visiting researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Berkeley. His area of expertise is computational astrophysics and cosmology. Matthias Steinmetz has successfully engaged in particle hydrodynamics simulations of cosmological environments as well as in simulations of dark matter in the Galactic halo. Large surveys of the Milky Way, which are associated with his name, enabled new findings regarding the field of the galactic dynamics and the properties of kinematical groups of stars. He is also German speaker of the International Astronomical Union and advisor and member of several committees within the scientific community.

Prof. Dr. Joachim Wambsganß, Director of the Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, has been elected vice president.

The German Astronomical Society, founded in 1863, is a modern astronomical society with more than 800 members dedicated to the advancement of astronomy and astrophysics and the networking between astronomers. It represents German astronomers, organises scientific meetings, publishes journals, offers grants, recognises outstanding work through awards and places a high priority on the support of talented young scientists, public outreach and astronomy education in schools.

(Press release of the German Astronomical Society)

Media Contact AG: Dr. Klaus Jäger, +49 6221 – 528 379, jaeger@mpia.de

Media Contact AIP: Kerstin Mork, +49 331 7499 469, presse@aip.de

The key topics of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) are cosmic magnetic fields and extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aim at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. Since 1992 the AIP is a member of the Leibniz Association.

The three astronomers observed the giant galaxy M87 (NGC4486), which is the central galaxy in the Virgo cluster, and discovered that it displays some bulk rotation, albeit of a very low amplitude. The precision of MUSE allowed the team to reveal that the stars of M87 can move around its centre with average velocities of just 10-20 km/s. Equivalent to 36-72,000 km/h, this speed may seem very high, but for galaxies this is extremely slow.

Elliptical galaxies have long been considered as essentially being made up of old stars that move randomly within them, like a swarm of bees. This has been challenged in many instances in the past ten-twenty years, but giant elliptical galaxies are still considered as a nearly round and non-rotating group of old stars.

By showing that a "simple" galaxy like M87 can be quite complicated in the eyes of the new MUSE spectrograph, this result demonstrates the potential of this new instrument for further advancing our understanding of galaxies, and their formation. Davor Krajnović states: “MUSE has the capability to enhance our understanding of galaxies, how they form and develop. By using the MUSE velocity data to constrain simulation models, we might reach a whole new level of precision.” Their work is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and a pre-publication version of the paper is available on arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6844.

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) is a 3D-spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory at Paranal (Chile). MUSE features a complex optical system with the capacity to split and slice a field that measures one square arcminute on the sky into 90,000 spatial elements. For each point a spectrum is created, covering the optical and near infrared wavelength region of 465-930nm. AIP provides the Data Reduction Software and operates one of the data centres accessible to scientists from all over the world.

Further information:

• Muse Website
• Press release “First Light for MUSE”, 5 March 2014
• Press release, University of Hertfordshire

Science contact: Dr. Davor Krajnović, +49 331-7499 237, dkrajnovic@aip.de

Media contact: Kerstin Mork , +49 331-7499 469, presse@aip.de

The key topics of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) are cosmic magnetic fields and extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aim at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. Since 1992 the AIP is a member of the Leibniz Association.

Magnetic flux ropes generated in the solar interior can become buoyant and start to rise. When such a flux loop reaches the surface, a bipolar emerging flux region (EFR) appears in the photosphere. The EFR represents the intersection of the inverse U-shaped flux bundle with the solar surface. However, only a small fraction of sunspots grows beyond this stage and matures to develop a penumbra with a radial filamentary structure that surrounds the dark core of the sunspot. This umbra can contain bright umbral dots and dark umbral cores, which are separated by bright, elongated light-bridges. One of the prime objective of the newly commissioned 1.5-meter GREGOR solar telescope is to investigate the interaction of magnetic fields and plasma motions at the highest spatial and temporal resolution.

The “early science phase” of the GREGOR solar telescope started in May 2014 using the Grating Infrared Spectrograph (GRIS). The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is in charge of the GREGOR Fabry-Pérot Interferometer (GFPI), an imaging spectropolarimeter for high-resolution photospheric and chromospheric observations. AIP’s research group for Optical Solar Physics organized a 50-day observing campaign in July/August 2014, where all members and partners of the GREGOR consortium proposed scientific tasks, which were then jointly carried out by a team of experienced observers at Observatorio del Teide, Izaña, Tenerife. Data processing is in full swing and the initial outcome indicates excellent performance of telescope and instruments. First scientific results will be presented at the fall meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Bamberg on 2014 September 25/26 in a special forum dedicated to “High-Resolution Solar Physics”.

The 1.5-meter GREGOR solar telescope was built by a German consortium under the leadership of the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics in Freiburg with the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, the Institute for Astrophysics Göttingen, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen as partners, and with contributions by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Picture
click to enlarge
High-resolution G-band images. bright points, pores, an emerging flux region, and a sunspot with umbral dots and light-bridges. The data were captured with the Blue Imaging Channel (BIC) of the GFPI in July 2014.
Movie: click

Media Contact: Kerstin Mork , +49 331 7499 469, presse@aip.de

The key topics of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) are cosmic magnetic fields and extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aim at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. Since 1992 the AIP is a member of the Leibniz Association.

The maps and an accompanying journal article appear the issue of the journal Science on 15 August 2014. The researchers say their work demonstrates a new way of uncovering the location and eventually the composition of the interstellar medium, which refers to the material found in the vast expanse between star systems within a galaxy.

This material, including dust and gas composed of atoms and molecules are left behind when a star dies. They also become the building blocks of new stars and planets. Analyzing rainbow-colored bands of starlight that have passed through space gives astronomers important information about the makeup of the space materials that the light has encountered. In 1922, a grad student’s photographs yielded some dark lines indicating ‘missing’ starlight, which must have been absorbed by a yet unknown source. These features were called diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs). Since then, scientists have identified more than 400 of these diffuse interstellar bands, but the material that is causing these bands to appear and their precise location have remained a mystery.

The nature of this puzzling material is important to astronomers because of the clues it could give about the physical conditions and chemistry of these regions between stars, critical components in theories of how stars and galaxies are formed. Researchers have speculated that the absorption of starlight that creates these dark bands points to the presence of unusually large complex molecules, but the proof has remained elusive. More concrete clues should emerge from the new pseudo-3D maps of the DIB-material within our Milky Way Galaxy produced by the 23 scientists who contributed to the Science article.

The maps were assembled from data collected over a 10-year period by the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE). The survey provided the mapmakers in the current project with data related to 500,000 stars. The vast size of the sample enabled the mapmakers to determine the distances of the material causing the DIBs and thus how it is distributed throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.

“With the wide area coverage of the spectroscopic survey RAVE it was for the first time possible to map out the three dimensional distribution of the DIBs” said Matthias Steinmetz of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), principle investigator of the RAVE survey. “We could show that the complex molecules responsible for the DIB features can also be found at larger distances to the Galactic plane than it is the case for interstellar dust”.

Janez Kos and Tomaz Zwitter of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia led the astronomy team that produced this paper.

RAVE is a multinational project with participation of scientists from Australia, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the USA, coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Germany. Funding of RAVE which guarantees extensive data, telescope and instrument access is provided by the participating institutions and the national research foundations.

Science Contact AIP: Prof. Dr. Matthias Steinmetz, msteinmetz@aip.de, +49 331 7499 381

Contact to first authors of the publication: Janez Kos, University of Ljubljana, janez.kos@fmf.uni-lj.si, +386 1 4766 507

Media Contact AIP / RAVE: Dr. Gabriele Schönherr / Kerstin Mork, presse@aip.de, +49 331 7499 469

Related links

The Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE)

The key topics of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) are cosmic magnetic fields and extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aim at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. Since 1992 the AIP is a member of the Leibniz Association.