News and Recent Results

Einstein Probe satellite, a collaboration of, among others, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has captured an extraordinary celestial event: an X-ray outburst from a rare binary system. This discovery sheds new light on the evolution of massive stars and demonstrates the unique capabilities of Einstein Probe in detecting transient X-ray sources. more

Einstein Probe has opened a new window onto the distant X-ray Universe, promising new views of the most faraway explosions in the cosmos. Less than three months after launch, the spacecraft already discovered a puzzling blast of X-rays that could require a change the way we explain the extraordinary explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.
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Dr. Esra Bulbul, lead scientist for the eROSITA cluster science and cosmology working group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), has been awarded the prestigious Mid-Career Award by the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). This recognition highlights her pioneering contributions to astrophysics and cosmology research. more

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has shed light on one of the most elusive components of the universe: the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). This "ghost" form of ordinary matter, long hypothesized but rarely detected, is thought to account for a significant portion of the universe's missing baryons — the matter that makes up stars, planets, and galaxies. more

Our Solar System dwells in a low-density environment called the Local Hot Bubble (LHB), filled by a tenuous, million-degree hot gas emitting dominantly in soft X-rays. A team led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) used the eROSITA All-Sky Survey data and found a large-scale temperature gradient in this bubble, possibly linked with past supernova explosions that expanded and reheated the bubble. The wealth of the eROSITA data also allowed the team to create a new 3D model of the hot gas in the solar neighbourhood. The highlight of this work features the discovery of a new interstellar tunnel towards the constellation Centaurus, potentially joining our LHB with a neighbouring superbubble. more

Dr. Matthias Kluge from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has received the 2024 Ludwig Biermann Award from the German Astronomical Society. This award recognizes his significant contributions to astrophysics, especially his pioneering research on galaxy clusters. Kluge's efforts with the eROSITA telescope on the SRG mission have been crucial in identifying and analyzing 12,000 galaxy clusters, deepening our knowledge of the cosmic web. more

Identifying massive black holes in low-mass galaxies is crucial for understanding black hole formation and growth over cosmic time but challenging due to their low accretion luminosities. Astronomers at MPE, led by Riccardo Arcodia, used the eROSITA X-ray telescope's all-sky survey to study massive black hole candidates selected based on variability in other wavelength ranges. Surprisingly, despite being flagged as accreting MBHs, the X-rays were weak and didn't match predictions from more massive AGN scaling relations. This discrepancy suggests either the absence of a canonical X-ray corona or the presence of unusual accretion modes and spectral energy distributions in these dwarf galaxy MBHs. more

Odd radio circles (ORC), a recently identified new class of extended faint radio sources, have captivated the curiosity of astronomers worldwide. A groundbreaking discovery by a team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics unveils the first detection of diffuse X-ray gas in the vicinity of the Cloverleaf ORC. Leveraging the advanced capabilities of the XMM-Newton telescope and the complementary multi-wavelength observations, the team unveiled the origin of the ORC as a cosmic dance of two galaxy groups.  more

Results from the first X-ray sky survey resolve the previous inconsistency between competing measurements of the structure of the Universe
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First eROSITA sky-survey data release makes public the largest ever catalogue of high-energy cosmic sources more