The Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society

Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....

. It is located in Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

, Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 near the top of the Koenigstuhl

Königstuhl (Odenwald)

The Königstuhl , translated "Kings seat", is a 567 metre high hill in the Odenwald Mountains and in the city of Heidelberg, in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The Königstuhl summit allows visitors a spectacular view of the city of Heidelberg and the River Neckar as well as the Rhine Valley...

, adjacent to the historic Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl

Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl

The Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory is an historic astronomical observatory located near the summit of the Königstuhl hill in the city of Heidelberg in Germany...

 astronomical observatory.

The institute was founded in 1967. Its founding directors were H. Elsässer and G. Munch, who were followed by K.-H. Böhm, G. H. Herbig

George Herbig

George Howard Herbig is an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. He is perhaps best known for the discovery of Herbig-Haro objects....

, and S. V. W. Beckwith. The current directors are Hans-Walter Rix

Hans-Walter Rix

Hans-Walter Rix is a German astronomer and director of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. He is the son of the linguist Helmut Rix....

 and Thomas Henning.

Research interests

Current research interests include formation of planet

Planet

A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...

s, star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

s in the group of Thomas Henning and galaxie

Galaxie

Galaxie is a Canadian multilingual digital pay television audio service owned by Stingray Digital.-Programming:Galaxie consists of 49 commercial-free music based audio channels, each devoted to a particular genre, distributed through digital television platforms. Each channel consists of a...

s and cosmology

Cosmology

Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...

 in the group of Hans-Walter Rix.

The MPIA also builds instruments or parts of them for ground-based telescopes and satellites, including the following:

• Calar Alto Observatory
  Calar Alto Observatory
  The Calar Alto Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated jointly by the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Instituto...
  
  , jointly run by the MPIA and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
  Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
  The Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía is an astrophysics-related research institute funded by the High Council of Scientific Research of the Spanish government Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas , and is located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain...
  
  
• Paranal Observatory
  Paranal Observatory
  Paranal Observatory is an astronomical observatory located on Cerro Paranal at 2,635 m altitude and operated by the European Southern Observatory. The Very Large Telescope is the largest telescope on Paranal, actually composed of four separate 8.2 m telescopes...
  
  
• Large Binocular Telescope
  Large Binocular Telescope
  Large Binocular Telescope is an optical telescope for astronomy located on Mount Graham in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, and is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory...
  
  
• Herschel Space Observatory
  Herschel Space Observatory
  The Herschel Space Observatory is a European Space Agency space observatory sensitive to the far infrared and submillimetre wavebands. It is the largest space telescope ever launched, carrying a single mirror of in diameter....
  
  

Graduate Program

The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics is a graduate program offering a Ph.D. in astrophysics

Astrophysics

Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior...

. The school is run in cooperation with the University of Heidelberg.

External links

• Homepage of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
• Homepage of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics