Max Planck Institute for Astronomy - Annual Report 2005

136 V. People and Events
Lemke: I was just as interested in the astronomical
problems. Elsässer had worked on zodiacal light and now
wanted to observe it in the infrared and mid-UV range
as well. The long-term objective was the separation of
the zodiacal light from other components of the night
sky brightness, and tHibse was to contribute to this. It
was absolutely fascinating for me to observe the glowing
gaseous nebulae, such as the Orion Nebula, with groundbased
telescopes in the infrared range and to detect embedded
point sources in addition to the huge extensive
emission. At that time, the observation of star formation
in gas and dust clouds actually started. Today this is one
of the main research fields at the MPIA.
All this still took place at the Landessternwarte. How
do you remember the establishment of the MPIA?
Lemke: Elsässer had hired me on February 1st, 1969,
together with seven more colleagues, including Thorsten
Neckel, Joachim Hermann, Josef Solf, Elsässer’s secretary
Traudl Filsinger as well as Bodo Schwarze, Wolfgang
Hormuth, and Franz Pihale from the workshops. At that
time, the Institute consisted of nine persons. In the beginning,
some of the MPIA staff worked in a hut on the
grounds of the Landessternwarte, and in 1975 we finally
moved into the new building.
The development of helios ran parallel to this.
Leinert: The German participation in this space probe
was the result of a meeting between the German
Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and the U.S. President Lyndon
B. Johnson in 1965. The question as to which kind of
instruments should be contributed by Germany was
entrusted to Ludwig Biermann, the most renowned
German astronomer at the time. Naturally he suggested
studying the solar winds he himself had discovered, but
also interplanetary dust. He regarded Hans Elsässer as the
Fig. V.13.3: Christoph Leinert and Dietrich Lemke at the end of
the festive colloquium.
specialist in this field, who then received the zodiacallight
photometer project (first at the Landessternwarte,
later at the MPIA).
It was Germany’s first participation in an interplanetary
space probe, and technologically, at least one double
step forward – therefore meaning new territory for all
of us. It was a young project pursued in many areas by
professional novices with great enthusiasm. I was made
P.I. (Principal Investigator) for the photometer, although
I didn’t even have my PhD then. It was a project worth
millions – something like that would be unthinkable
today. But it was another time then – in many respects.
For instance, it was not so important to publish anything
– only if the work on the project was proceeding well.
Five years after I recieved my PhD, I still had not published
a paper in a refereed journal. Can you imagine that?
Technically, our instrument was state-of-the-art and very
successful. We used carbon fiber material for the first
time in space astronomy then.
What is your present-day view of the decisions
Elsässer made at that time?
Leinert: With the participation in Helios, Elsässer
received a great deal of funding and was able to attract
PhD students to the Institute. This certainly was important
for the development of the MPIA. But at the time, he
very swiftly rejected participation in successor projects
without consulting us, although ulysses – a space probe
flying above the poles of the sun – would have been an interesting
opportunity. In his opinion, the scientific problem
had essentially been solved with Helios, or at least was no
longer a suitable main field of research for the Institute.