Highlights — Some exciting recent scientific results from our group

Supermassive black hole inflates giant bubble
Observations of the Radio Galaxy Messier 87 with the European low-frequency LOFAR Telescope

Using the brand-new radio telescope LOFAR, an international team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have taken one of the best images ever of giant bubbles produced by a super-massive black hole. The picture - taken in a frequency range normally used for airplane communication - shows what looks like a giant balloon filled with plasma and magnetic fields. This bubble, much exceeding the size of the radio galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster, was slowly inflated by one of the most massive black holes in our cosmic neighbourhood, located in the centre of M87. more
A black widow's Tango Mortale in gamma-ray light!
Max Planck scientists discover record-breaking millisecond pulsar with new analysis method
 
Pulsars are the compact remnants from explosions of massive stars. Some of them spin around their own axis hundreds of times per second, emitting beams of radiation into space. Until now, they could only be found through their pulsed radio emissions. Now, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute/AEI) in Hanover assisted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy have discovered a millisecond pulsar solely via its pulsed gamma radiation. A new data analysis method developed by the AEI was crucial for the success. The pulsar is accompanied by an unusual sub-stellar partner, which it is vaporizing, hence the name ``black widow''
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A pulsar with a tremendous hiccup!
Max Planck scientists discover a young and energetic neutron star with unusually irregular rotation
 
Pulsars are superlative cosmic beacons. These compact neutron stars rotate about their axes many times per second, emitting radio waves and gamma radiation into space. Using ingenious data analysis methods, researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and for Radio Astronomy, in an international collaboration, dug a very special gamma-ray pulsar out of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The pulsar J1838−0537 is radio-quiet, very young, and, during the observation period, experienced the strongest rotation glitch ever observed for a gamma-ray-only pulsar.
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The discovery of deceleration

The discovery of deceleration

February 02, 2012
Stellar Astrophysics helps to explain the behaviour of fast rotating neutron stars in binary systems
 
Pulsars are among the most exotic celestial bodies known. They have diameters of about 20 kilometres, but at the same time roughly the mass of our sun. A sugar-cube sized piece of its ultra-compact matter on the Earth would weigh hundreds of millions of tons. A sub-class of them, known as millisecond pulsars, spin up to several hundred times per second around their own axes. Previous studies reached the paradoxical conclusion that some millisecond pulsars are older than the universe itself. The astrophysicist Thomas Tauris from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie in Bonn could resolve this paradox by computer simulations.
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