Date	Speaker	Topic
18.09.2015	Martin Kuerster	How big is the universe? Most astronomers believe that the size of the universe is infinite. But how certain can we be about this? When trying to answer this question we attempt to make a statement about the world as a whole, about the biggest entity that we can imagine. This can only succeed, if we can assume that the behaviour of the universe at large equals the behaviour that we know from our cosmic neighbourhood and that it also was the same at earlier times. This means that the same laws of nature must be valid at any time and everywhere, which cannot be taken for granted. A journey to increasingly larger distances and earlier times will provide an overview of the known universe. The talk will outline the way astronomers measure distances in the universe. Starting off from its origin in the extreme physical state that we call "big bang" the evolution of the universe will be illustrated. Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
25.09.2015	Markus Feldt	SPHERE - Lessons learned This talk discusses some of the project-related findings, which emerged during design, construction and commissioning of the SPHERE instrument. Rather than presenting the usual summary of successfully accomplished milestones, the focus is more on failures during project execution. But also correctly implemented things help to learn for the future... Mainly the MPIA contributions will be handled (data reduction software, ADCs, detector positioning unit) extended by some analyses of the overall project execution. Markus Feldt will very briefly also address the loss of the competition phase during the pre-SPHERE period. For sure, some of the findings are not new and some of the failures were repeated from other projects. For some of the undesirable developments there are no easy solutions - often the opinions of how to tackle a problem are controversial. This makes the communication of possible root causes of nasty errors even more important and helps to find corrective actions and countermeasures. Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
02.10.2015	Kai Noeske	The history of light in the universe Nearly all visible light is created in the outer layer of stars. Therefore, the visible light of the universe explains the history of a star and when it was born. We will learn how the birth of stars is connected with large structures of matter and the galaxies. The understanding of the history and the birth of stars plays a key role in understanding the universe and its evolution. This knowledge explains the assembly of structure in dark matter, tells us about physics behind the birth of stars and gas in galaxies and helps to understand the creation of heavy chemical elements, which finally lead to the generation of earth like planets and the live on it. As of late, the history of stars can be observed with large telescopes from ground and space up to more than 12 billion years into the past and in short even to a 100 million years after the big bang. These observations are accompanied by enormous computer simulations to understand the physics in the stars and in the Galaxies better and better. Presentation: German Slides: English Part1 Part2 Questions: German, English
09.10.2015	Coryn Bailer-Jones	Astronomical threats to the Earth In this short non-technical talk, Coryn Bailer-Jones will give an overview of some of the astronomical phenomena which can have an impact on the Earth, focusing in particular on asteroid and comet impacts. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
16.10.2015	Klaus Jaeger	Hunting for light - How astronomers obtain their phantastic images Have you ever tried to take a photo of the night sky? Would you like to take pictures that capture a bit of the aesthetics with which astronomical images inspire us? Special tricks, experience, and the consideration of a few physical facts make it possible to do this even with simple equipment. But how do astronomers obtain their phantastic images? Besides the beauty of these images it's actually about something much more important: the sophisticated analysis of the data and the hunt for amzing insights into the universe. Using impressive examples Klaus Jäger will explain the exciting path that leads from a simple sky photo to professional images of the most distant galaxies at the edge of the observable universe - and at the edge of the technically feasible. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
23.10.2015	--	No talk
30.10.2015	Dr. med. Joerg Hoffmann	Our institute's work doctor talks (once more) about "Medical aspects of stay at high altitude (VLT, LBT, etc.)" and "Prevention and vaccinations when traveling abroad" Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
06.11.2015	Klaus Meisenheimer	PANIC works - Lesson (still to be) learned Exactly one year ago, on November 6th 2014, PANIC saw its first light. After the accident in March 2015 and the subsequent repair, PANIC is successfully back in operation since June 1st 2015 ("second light"). Klaus Meisenheimer will briefly shed light on the developments before first light, before putting the focus on the experience gained since June 2015. In summary, this talk will give a status report of PANIC's hard- and software, plus support and instructions for astronomical users. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
13.11.2015	Joerg-Uwe Pott	MICADO Mikado, a game were you have to pick up sticks. While you pick up one stick you are not allowed to shift any of the others. This could be also a slogan for MICADO the first light instrument abroad the E-ELT. One of the main purposes, MICADO will be built for is measuring the relative position between astronomical objects. Therefore, it is very important that the image is stable. Any shift of objects from one to the other image, or any smearing of the image i.e. due to influences of the atmosphere will hamper the observation. Jörg-Uwe will explain to us how MICADO will reach a unprecedented precision over a wide field of view to measure the relative distances of objects, what else can be done with MICADO and what our institute will contribute to built this instrument over the next ten years. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
20.11.2015	Diethard Peter	Tailor-made wavefronts - computer generated holograms in use One might think immediately of Starship Enterprise by reading the word hologram, where virtual worlds are created holographically on the so called Holodeck or one gets reminded on 'The doctor', a Emergency Medical Hologram in Star Trek Voyager. Sadly, this technology is not that far yet. But ARGOS, the laser adaptive optics system abroad LBT, uses holograms in its calibration unit to create tailor-made wavefronts. An objective, which contains also a computer generated hologram (CGH), images a picture of the laser as it is on sky. With this the adaptive optics system can be calibrated and tested at day time. Diethard will report to us his experiences with such a light source. Especially the traps, which one can fall in during design and test of such a unit. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
27.11.2015	Natalie Fischer	Planetarium show, Haus der Astronomie
04.12.2015	Dietrich Lemke	Dark lines in the spectrum of the sun 200 years ago, Joseph Fraunhofer discovered the dark lines in the spectrum of the sun and other stars during his stay in Benediktbeuern Abbey. Henceforth, he made use of them in manufacturing better lenses for his famous refractive telescopes. Only forty years later, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff, both in Heidelberg, revealed the physical nature of the Fraunhofer lines as the finger prints of the chemical elements in the sun. During the same time, the red or blue shift of those lines as caused by the movement of cosmic sources away from or towards us by the effect named after Christian Doppler has been discovered. This initiated the astrophysical conquest of the Universe, which is the basis of our modern view of the world. Please join Dietrich Lemke on a historical journey (also) to the origins of principal astronomical techniques. Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
11.12.2015	--	Christmas party
18.12.2015		still vacant
25.12.2015	--	Christmas