Natural Sciences - Astronomy & Space

Freie Universität professor receives recognition for her contributions to exoplanet research and the PLATO space mission.

Particles in the atmosphere, known as aerosols, cool the climate by acting as cloud condensation nuclei.

The LOFAR radio telescope has delivered the most detailed radio map of the northern sky to date. It provides new insights into active galaxies, star formation and rare cosmic objects.

The small satellite SONATE-2 from Würzburg has been in orbit for two years. It completed its mission a year ago; it is still valuable for science.

Dr. Andreas Schwarz, a German communications scientist at the Technische Universität Ilmenau, has been invited to become a member of NASA's Task Force 2, "Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (NASA-DARES)." The US space agency is developing a strategic roadmap for the next ten years to explore the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. The working group, in which Dr. Andreas Schwarz is involved, contributes various social science perspectives that are important for the responsible communication of complex scientific results from space research and the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life to society.

New method: Researchers at Oxford University and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in the Potsdam Science Park propose a new way to detect supermassive black hole binaries using gravitational lensing.