Date	Speaker	Topic
15.01.2016	Andreas Quirrenbach (ZAH, LSW Heidelberg)	The commissioning of CARMENES CARMENES is as new instrument, which has been installed and commissioned at Calar Alto in the second half of 2015. Besides the Landesternwarte, MPIA and CAHA another eight institutions in Germany and in Spain participated in the development of CARMENES. This consortium will devote the coming three years to search for planets around very small and low-mass stars (so-called red dwarfs). One prime goal is the discovery of earth-like planets comprising surface temperatures, which allow for the evolution of life. To reach the necessary sensitivity and precision, CARMENES is equipped with two extremely stable spectrographs, one for the visible and one for the NIR wavelength range, respectively. Those are installed inside dedicated vacuum tanks in the dome's Coudé lab and coupled via fibers to the 3.5m telescope. Between 2016 and 2018, 80% of the observing time of the 3.5m telescope are reserved for the CARMENES survey. During the remaining night time the instrument is available for any other project. Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
22.01.2016	Ralph Hofferbert	On the way to the stars: Shipping of LINC-NIRVANA to the LBT As already written on our Christmas card: Wintry mood prevailed in November 2015 on top of Mount Graham, Arizona, at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT): After more than ten years of planning, manufacturing and testing, LINC-NIRVANA found its ultimate mounting pad between the two primary mirrors of the LBT for the first time. The near infrared imaging instrument shall combine – depending on the implementation phase – adaptive optics and interferometric beam combination of the two mirrors to achieve ultra high spatial resolution. Beforehand, the instrument had been disassembled and made a 6-week-trip over the Atlantic as one oversize transport plus nine sea containers. In the months to come the delicate optical components and the cryogenic near-infrared camera will be re-integrated, such that LINC-NIRVANA and the telescope get finally married from mid of 2016 on. The talk will mainly address the aspects related to the shipping and the initial installation at LBT. Besides that, the prime features of the instrument itself and the planned activities for 2016 will be briefly described. Presentation: German Slides: German Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 (or ​here) Questions: German, English
29.01.2016	Werner Laun	No silhouettes for the VLTI, two massive stainless steel sculptures from Matisse Henri Matisse spent most of his lifetime in Nice and is buried there as well. This is not the plan for the interferometer of the same name, which is designated for the VLTI in Chile. Currently, the instrument is still in the test phase at the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur and is supposed to start its journey to South America in 2017. The MPIA has a quite heavy contribution to this project: Both cryostats, each with a mass of 1.5 metric tons, have been built in Heidelberg. Various boundary conditions, contraints and interfaces required a specific and custom-made realisation. The talk tries describing in a vivid and generally understandable way how the technological challenges have been solved. Presentation: German Slides: Englisch Questions: German, English
05.02.2016	--	Carnival break
12.02.2016	--	Carnival break
19.02.2016	Jeroen Bouwman	Precise spectro-photometry from space The first thing, which naturally comes to mind when asked what one can do with spectra, is the detection of spectral lines of atomic and molecular gas or the signature of dust grains. With this, the chemistry and physical conditions of very different astronomical environments can be probed, like stellar and planetary atmospheres and the interstellar medium and molecular clouds. For many applications such as radial velocity measurements a high spectral resolution and very accurate wavelength calibration is more important than a precise absolute flux calibration of the measurements. However, many scientific applications exist where highly accurate spectro-photometric (i.e. the absolute and relative flux calibration for each spectral channel) is crucial. One can think of spectroscopic observations of transiting exoplanets, time-variability of circumstellar disks or simply constructing spectral energy distributions by combining the observations of multiple instruments spanning a wide wavelength range. Jeroen Bouwman will discuss some of the problems encountered and their solutions to achieve precise spectro-photometry from space for three different spectrographs: The low resolution spectrograph of Spitzer, the photoconductor array camera and spectrometer of Herschel, and the mid-infrared instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope. Presentation: German Slides: Englisch Questions: German, English
26.02.2016	Florian Rodler	The search for Earth 2.0 More than 20 years ago, the first exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star was discovered. In these 20 years, a completely new branch of astronomy has been created: the search for exoplanets and especially for earth-like planets. We are getting closer and closer in finding an answer to one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of mankind: Are we alone in the universe? Is there life outside the earth? Rather soon, astronomy will undergo a revolution - new giant telescopes are about to be built allowing for an investigation of those faraway worlds in the coming years with a precision surpassing all current standards. We will be the first generation of human beings, which will discover extraterrestial signs of life. Florian Rodler will briefly talk about the discovery methods for exoplanets. He will present the current status of research in this field and will sketch those strategies, which allow scientists to identify habitable planets and to find the signatures of life. Presentation: German Slides: German Questions: German, English
04.03.2016	--	No speaker found
11.03.2016	Markus Poessel	Gravitational waves and how to detect them In the summer of 1916, Einstein postulated the existence of gravitational waves: These are tiny little variations in the geometry of space traveling at the speed of light. On February, 11th 2016, the LIGO-consortium announced evidence for the first direct detection of such waves. This would open a completely new window for astronomy - the adjacency of black holes, the interior of star explosions, in the medium-term also the time shortly after the big bang would be accessible for research. This AstroTechTalk will explain, what gravitational waves are, how they are generated, how one can detect them - and what this could mean for astronomy in the coming years and decades. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
18.03.2016		Still vacant
25.03.2016	--	Easter break (Good Friday)
01.04.2016	Mark Norris	Seeing Further, Denser, Deeper - Science with LINC-NIRVANA Now that LINC-NIRVANA is undergoing its final reassembly at the LBT and well on the road to commissioning on sky in the later part of this year, it is the perfect time to describe the cutting-edge science that LN will do. I will briefly present the unique capabilities of LN and then go on to describe the novel science these capabilities will enable; from probing the formation sites of stars, finding hitherto illusive intermediate mass black holes, and investigating the earliest epochs of formation of the most massive galaxies. Presentation: English Slides: German Questions: English, German (will be translated)
08.04.2016	--	Cancelled (speaker got sick)
15.04.2016	Alexander Sivitilli	Laser Alignment Teleskop The Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System (ARGOS) is currently being commissioned at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). This AO set-up is unique in that it harnesses six artificial laser guide stars to correct wavefronts over a wide 4' x 4' field. Due to telescope flexure and maintenance, lasers can become misaligned from the wavefront sensors of ARGOS, requiring frequent manual realignment. In order to save time in both commissioning and operation of ARGOS, an automatic alignment of the lasers with the wavefront sensors is needed. This presentation describes the construction and implementation of a Laser Alignment Telescope (LAT) to acquire images of the launched lasers in addition to the accompanying Smart Laser Alignment (SLA) algorithm that automatically identifies and aligns the lasers to their respective wavefront sensors at which point ARGOS takes control. Presentation: English Slides: German Questions: English, German
22.04.2016	Frank Kittmann	What does a Ranger and a Bastard on Mount Graham? Soon, the commissioning of LINC-NIRVANA will start, with it a long era of software developments comes to an end. In conjunction with this major event Frank Kittmann takes the opportunity to explain the instrument control software in an easy, pictorial and understandable way. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
29.04.2016	No talk	Festkolloquium Thomas Henning
06.05.2016	--	Bridging day (Ascension Day)
13.05.2016
20.05.2016	--	Pentecost break
27.05.2016	--	Bridging day (Corpus Christi)
03.06.2016	Thales Gutcke	What do galaxies consist of? State-of-the-art simulations of galaxy formation In this talk, Thales Gutcke will give a brief overview of the present-day knowledge of galaxy formation. With a focus on the simulation methods themselves, she will introduce techniques like N-body and hydrodynamic calculations. The work is coupled to the central question of her PhD thesis: What do galaxies consist of? In this context, the talk will give some insight related to the "circum-galactic medium”, i.e. the nearly invisible gas far away from the stars within a galaxy Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
10.06.2016	Markus Feldt	METIS - Future perspective and current status METIS is one of the three, currently being developed first-light-instruments for the giant European telescope E-ELT. As camera and spectrograph for the mid-infrared wavelength range, it will yield astronomical data with an unprecedented richness of detail. The prime science case, which drives the instrument's specification, is the observation of dust disks around young stars and of exo-planets. But also in other fields, METIS will provide ground-breaking results. MPIA is the second largest contributor in the METIS consortium, which is led by NOVA in the Netherlands. We are responsible for the two imaging cameras and the wavefront sensor. The ambitious schedule aims for a delivery of the instrument to ESO in the year 2025. After the PI, Bernhard Brandl, gave a first overview exactly one year ago in the AstroTechTalk, Markus Feldt will focus today a bit more on planets and disks and even stronger on the MPIA work packages and the currently running manpower discussions. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
17.06.2016	Florian Schindler (Dr. Johannes Heidenhain GmbH)	High-precision angular gauges for telescopes Since years, our instrumentation projects make use of the optical linear and angular encoders of the company Heidenhain from Upper Bavaria. For instance, this is currently the case for the De-Rotator in the MICADO project for the E-ELT. In this talk the company introduces itself and describes in particular the astronomical application of its optical sensors. The following topics are handled in detail: - Overview of the company Heidenhain - Angular gauges for telescopes - Optical scanning principle in angular gauges - Accuracy and resolution of angular gauges in telescopes - Examples of telescopes making use of the Heidenhain sensors Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
24.06.2016	--	Fachbeirat
01.07.2016	Nadine Neumayer	What makes ARGOS unique? ARGOS (the Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System) aboard the LBT projects its six laser guide stars with more than 100 Watts on the Arizonian sky since a while now. It has already been reported several times, that the guide stars are means to measure the atmospheric distortion in order to improve the image quality of LUCI over a large field of view. Which scientific questions we at MPIA want to answer with this instrument was never reported in detail. Nadine Neumayer will show us some of the first great data that we could get with ARGOS. Besides exciting pictures she will then highlight a few of the science cases that ARGOS will enable: from galactic star formation, the build-up of galactic nuclei, to the detection of massive black holes. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
08.07.2016	--	Canceled due to sickness
15.07.2016	--	Summer party
22.07.2016	--	Summer break
29.07.2016	--	Summer break