European Space Agency ESA (Chapter II.3):
ISOPHOT, one of four measuring instruments on the ISO, was developed
under the coordinating leadership of the Institute.
Participation in international observatories
and projects is also of very major importance. For example, the
Institute has been working for some years on one of the largest
telescopes in the northern hemisphere, UKIRT (United Kingdom Infrared
Telescope), the British 3.9- metre telescope in Hawaii, and also
on MAX (Mid-Infrared Array eXpandable), the IR camera built at
the MPIA, and on an associated tip-tilt secondary mirror. In return
for these activities, the Heidelberg astronomers receive a fixed
proportion of the observation time on this telescope.
The MPIA is coordinating the development
of the high-resolution CONICA infrared camera for the ESO’s
Very Large Telescope (VLT, Figure I.4), which will become the
world’s largest telescope, on the Paranal in Chile. A decision
has already been taken to participate in the development and construction
of MIDI, an interferometry instrument for the VLT (Chapter III).
Above and beyond this, as from the year 2002, the MPIA will be
substantially involved in the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT,
Figure I.5), another of the new generation of telescopes. The
LBT is currently being built by an American-Italian-German consortium
on Mount Graham in Arizona, USA. It will be the most powerful
telescope in the northern hemisphere. In conjunction with the
MPI
für extraterrestrische Physik/MPI
of Extra-Terrestrial Physics in Garching, the MPI für Radio
astronomie/MPI of Radio Astronomy in Bonn, the Astrophysikalisches
Institut Potsdam/Potsdam Astrophysical Institute and the Landessternwarte
Heidelberg, the MPIA will probably have a 25% share in the costs
and use of the LBT.
Aided by this wide and varied range of instruments,
the MPIA will be able to go on making a major contribution towards
astronomical research in the 21st century.
Thanks to its location in Heidelberg, the
MPIA has the opportunity of working in a particularly active astronomical
environment: there has constantly been a rich variety of cooperation
with the Landessternwarte, the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut,
the University’s Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics or
the Cosmophysics Department of the MPI für Kernphysik / MPI
of Nuclear Physics. One particularly striking and effective aspect
of this cooperation comprises the Sonderforschungsbereiche/special
research areas established over periods of many years: number
328 (»Evolution of Galaxies«, 1987–1998) and number
1700 (»Galaxies in the Young Universe«, from 1999 onwards),
in which all the Heidelberg Institutes mentioned above are involved,
with major proportions of their resources.
The Institute’s tasks also include
informing an extensive public audience about the results of astronomical
research. Accordingly, members of the Institute give lectures
in schools, adult education centres and planetariums, and they
appear at press conferences or on radio and television programmes,
especially when there are astronomical events which attract major
attention from the public. Numerous groups of visitors come to
the MPIA on the Königstuhl and to the Calar Alto Observatory.
Since 1976, the premises of the MPIA have been the setting for
a regular one-week teacher training course held in the autumn,
which is very popular among teachers of physics and mathematics
in Baden-Württemberg.
The lively interest with which a wide sector
of the population follows our work was evident in the enormous
crowds attending the »Open Day« on 12 October 1997,
when a total of 12500 visitors came to the Königstuhl: only
the narrowness of the access roads limited the number of visitors.
Finally, the monthly journal Sterne
und Weltraum (
Stars and Space), co-founded by Hans
Elsässer in 1962, is published at the MPIA. This journal
is aimed at the general public and it offers a lively forum both
for specialist astronomers and for the large body of amateur astronomers
and interested layman.
Some Important
Questions
The central
question of all cosmological and astronomical research deals with
the creation and development both of the universe as a whole,
and of the stars, the galaxies, the sun and its planets. The MPIA’s
research pro
