Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
The research focus of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research is our cosmic neighborhood: the solar system with its planets and moons, comets and asteroids as well as the sun. The aim of the scientists is to describe the processes in the solar system in models and to simulate them on the computer. In addition, instruments are being developed and built to study these bodies from space. The Institute is involved in numerous space missions.
Solar Probe Aditya-L1: Explosive Debut in Space
When the Sun hurled enormous amounts of radiation into space in an explosive eruption on February 22 of last year, the Indian space probe Aditya-L1, launched a few months earlier, was watching closely – and thus captured the first images of such a flare in the lowermost solar atmosphere. A team of researchers involving MPS presents the analysis of the observational data in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The observed category X6.3 flare was one of the most powerful of the past year.
Origin of Fast and Slow Solar Wind Discovered
Tiny plasma jets on the Sun drive both the fast and the slow solar wind, as can be seen from data collected by ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft. A team of researchers led by the MPS has succeeded in relating images of tiny plasma jets in coronal holes, dark regions in the solar atmosphere, to in situ measurements of the solar wind. The jets are approximately 100 kilometers wide, last for approximately a minute and hurl charged particles into space at speeds of about 100 kilometers per second.
Ceres: Building Blocks of Life Delivered from Space
The organic material found in a few areas on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres is probably of exogenic origin. Impacting asteroids from the outer asteroid belt may have brought it with them. In the journal AGU Advances, a group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany presents the most comprehensive analysis to date of this mysterious material and its geological context.
Studying Planetary Systems in the Making
How do planets form from the disks of gas and dust that orbit around young stars? At the MPS, Joanna Drążkowska is investigating this question within the framework of a Lise Meitner Group of the Max Planck Society. The researcher's goal is to describe the entire development, spanning billions of years, from the smallest dust grains to the largest planets, in a unified model and to simulate it on the computer.
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When the Sun hurled enormous amounts of radiation into space in an explosive eruption on February 22 of last year, the Indian space probe Aditya-L1, launched a few months earlier, was watching closely – and thus captured the first images of such a ...
Tiny plasma jets on the Sun drive both the fast and the slow solar wind, as can be seen from data collected by ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft. An international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in ...
The organic material found in a few areas on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres is probably of exogenic origin. Impacting asteroids from the outer asteroid belt may have brought it with them. In the journal AGU Advances, a group of researchers led by ...
How do planets form from the disks of gas and dust that orbit around young stars? At the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, Joanna Drążkowska is investigating this question within the framework of a Lise Meitner Group of ...