Annual Report 2011 Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

Fig. V.1.3: The author, Dietrich Lemke (left), in conversation
with Immo Appenzeller, the former director of MPIA’s neighbour
institute on Königstuhl, the Landessternwarte.
see Fig.V.1.1), and when the German-Japan Round Table
(organized by KTS) came up to the Königstuhl (December
1).
And on November 15, we had the first event in the
HdA’s Klaus Tschira Auditorium. We celebrated with
a special scientific symposium including international
guests the retirement of Jakob Staude, the long-time head
of public outreach at MPIA and chief editor of Sterne und
Weltraum. Even the editorial office of this astronomy
magazine (published by Spektrum) which has been produced
for decades at MPIA moved into the new building
together with the MPIA graphics department and, of
course, the HdA-team already on September 26.
If someone wants to learn more about the institute –
from its beginnings in the 1960s until the construction
of the HdA – one now has a new opportunity: since 2011
we have released an intriguing book authored by MPIA
scientist Dietrich Lemke entitled Im Himmel über Heidelberg.
The book was presented at a ceremony held in
the MPIA lecture hall on May 23 (see Fig.V.1.2 and 3).
Other developments at the Institute
What has been described in the previous chapters I to IV
represents only a relatively small part of the total scientific
or technical activities done at MPIA in 2011. Since
we vary the topics described in the annual reports over
the years to avoid excessive lengths we recommend to
look at several annual reports for a more complete picture.
This explains that some of the currently very important
topics for MPIA are only marginally mentioned in
Chapter I to IV or even be missing. Therefore, we would
like to mention here for example, that the technical departments
in collaboration with colleagues at Calar Alto
successfully managed to solve a very difficult problem at
the mount of the 3.5 m telescope at the beginning of the
year and therefore secured the continued operation of the
telescope. This was of particular importance since the
new agreement between the Max Planck Society and its
Spanish counterpart, the CSIC, entered into force. This
agreement regulates the continued operation of Caha until
2018.
The year 2011 was also another successful year in the
use of hersChel – both from a scientific as well as from a
technical perspective, because the currently largest space
telescope with instrumental contributions from MPIA
worked flawlessly and provided excellent data for MPIA
scientists which are involved in several key projects.
It is also remarkable that we already successfully completed
the work on the instruments Miri and NirspeC for
the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which is expected
for launch in 2018. And finally, we should also
mention that we have started further initiatives to improve
the long-term project planning and project management
(for example through a special course about Scientific
Project Management kindly held by Michael Perryman
in February 2011).
Bereavement
V.1 Looking back at 2011 85
Credit: D.Anders
Besides all these positive events, there was unfortunately
cause for mourning. On May 7, suddenly and
unexpectedly died Crystal Brasseur. Before she became
a PhD student in the Galaxy and Cosmology department
of MPIA, she completed her M.Sc. degree in
Astronomy in 2009 at the University of Victoria. We
will keep her in our thoughts.
Klaus Jäger, Thomas Henning,
Markus Pössel, Axel M. Quetz,
Hans-Walter Rix, Mathias Voss