Projects and Collaborations
ZAH researchers are drivers and key participants in a large number of
top international projects spanning observations, instrumentation, simulations
and theory, in collaboration with the world's foremost
research institutions. These projects and collaborations are also a signature of
the strong interrelation of theory and
observation and the tight linking of the research institutes all over the world.
Here we name just a few of these current and future collaborations; more can be
found at the institue websites.
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In the two EU Training and Research Networks
the strong (ANGLES - Astrophysics Network
for Galaxy LEnsing Studies) and the weak gravitational lensing effect
(DUEL - The Dark Universe with Extragalactic
Lensing) is used to explore the visible and the dark Universe.
In these two programs the international education of PhD students and Postdocs
is a major goal.
PLANET (Probing Lens Anomaly NETwork)
is a collaboration to follow-up
gravitational lensing events with the aim to discover extra-solar
planets. This method is potentially sensitive to masses as small as
the Earth's.
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The ZAH is directly involved in two future satellite missions of the European
Space Agency ESA.
Gaia is the next big astrometry mission to be launched in 2011.
Gaia will
measure the positions, parallaxes, proper motions, luminosities and colours of
more than 1 billion stars with unprecedented precision, complemented by radial
velcities and spectra of 100 million stars.
Main goal is to elucidate the structure, formation and evolution of the Milky Way.
With the satellite mission Planck the Cosmic Microwave Background, the
oldest directly observable relic of the early evolutionary phase of the
universe, will be measured with highest precision.
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The High Energy Stereoscopic System H.E.S.S. in Namibia is
the most powerful ground based experiment in the high-energy and astro-particle
physics. In the building phase II the spatial resolution at the highest energy
range will be doubled.
The Large Binocular Telescope "LBT" in Arizona (USA) is the most
powerful telescope in the northern hemisphere.
Lucifer I and II are cryogene spectrographs/cameras for both telescopes
of the LBT, which can be used in the near Infrared up to 2.5 micrometer
wavelength.
LUCIFER 1 will start working in 2008 and the second instrument is planned for
2009. The extremely high resolution of the LBT with these special instruments is
perfectly suited for the investigation of star and planet formation as well as
for detailed views on distant galaxies and quasars.
The Landessternware is a member of the PRIMA Consortium, along with MPIA,
Geneva Observatory, and ESO. This instrument is a VLTI backend. It
measures the angular separation between a science star and a reference
star. Changes in the angular separation, after calibration, indicate that
the science star has a planetary system. PRIMA will be accurate to
approximately 10 microarcseconds, sufficient for detecting Jupiter-sized
planets. The Landessternwarte is responsible for the data-reduction
software.
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AstroGrid-D
is a research project in the area
"e-Science" and "Grid middleware" for the support of
scientific work in the context of the German
D-Grid-Initiative.
The resulting Grid-infrastructure will be available for all german scientists.
GRACE (GRApe + mpraCE)is a cooperation project,
supported by the
Volkswagen-Stiftung, dedicated to develop special hardware
for high-performance computers.
The hybrid-structure of this new type of
super-computer combines three elements: a normal
64 prozessor Beowulf PC cluster, special developed computer hardware with
fixed-wired gravitational force computation
(GRAPE),
developed in a project of
Japanese astrophysicists at the Univ. of Tokyo,
and flexible reprogrammable chips
(FPGA,
field programmable gate array).
A performance of 4 Tflop/s computational
speed is actually realized.
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The ZAH is partner of some big international projects, which scan systematically
large areas of the sky. The
SDSS-Project (Sloan Digital Sky Survey; 2000-2008) in New Mexico is the
most extensive CCD survey for photometry and spectroscopy in order to determine
the positions and physical properties of stars and galaxies at the Northern
sky. The data are taken to investigate the history and structure of the Milky
Way and galaxy evolution in general.
The Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE; 2003-2010) in Australia measures
radial velocities and the chemical composition of 1 million stars at the Southern
sky to determine the evolution of the Milky Way disc.
The Panoramic
Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at Hawaii
will start very soon a new Northern sky survey,
which is able to measure five times
fainter objects than the SDSS. Additionally to brightnesses and colours the
variability of objects will be determined. The search for extrasolar planets and
the investigation of structure and evolution of the Milky Way and distant
galaxies are important ais of the project.
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In the 'Sonderforschungsbereich' SFB 439
"Galaxies in the young universe", supported by all astronomical
institutes in Heidelberg, many aspects of the formation and evolution of
galaxies, galaxy clusters and of quasars in the cosmological context are
investigated.
The transregional 'Sonderforschungsbereich' TRansRegio (TRR33)
"The Dark Universe " has the complementary viewpoint of investigating
the effect of Dark Matter and Dark Energy on the visible universe.
JETSET is a Marie Curie Research Training Network (RTN)
with the goal to understand the jets of young stars.
The network covers 3 aspects: (i) jet formation in the labratory,
(ii) observation of jets and young stars, and (iii)
numerical simulations to Jet formation and propagation
in molecular clouds using the new grid-technology.
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