Building Universes: Modeling the Cosmos with Supercomputers

Lecture in English by Dr. Aniket Bhagwat (MPA Garching)

Friday, 6 February 2026, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

How do we create a Universe? In this talk, I take you inside the world of computational astrophysics, where Universes are born from the laws of physics on supercomputers. Starting from a nearly uniform cosmos just after the Big Bang, numerical simulations follow the growth of structure as gravity draws matter together, gas collapses and the first galaxies ignite with stars and light.
Across 13.8 billion years of cosmic time, these simulated Universes evolve from simplicity into complexity: the cosmic web, dark matter halos, luminous galaxies, exploding stars and supermassive black holes that shape their surroundings. By turning equations into evolving worlds, supercomputers allow us to trace how galaxies form, change and interact with their environments—connecting the early Universe to the structured cosmos we see today.
But how real are these virtual Universes? Which physical processes truly shape galaxies across cosmic time? What have we learnt so far and what pressing questions keep astrophysicists up at night? Come learn how numerical simulations help us understand the astrophysics of our Universe.

credits: Dr. Aniket Bhagwat

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BepiColombo – Getting to, surviving, and studying Mercury

Lecture in English by Jamie MacLeod (R&D Engineer, Ansys MotorCAD)

Friday, 28 November 2025, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

BepiColombo is an ambitious mission to Mercury, built jointly by ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency), and hopes to study both the planet surface and the magnetosphere, giving us further insight into how planets form. The talk will give an overview of some of the daring engineering involved to get to Mercury and survive so close to the sun, and the science interest and instruments on board the spacecraft.

credits: ESA

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Spooky Astronomy (English lecture)

English Halloween lecture – costumes welcome!!

Spooky Astronomy

by Paul Salazar (Munich Public Observatory)

Friday, 31 October 2025, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

A faint nebula that looks like a supernova remnant like a monster jumping right at you, galaxies in the shape of a mysterious cartwheel, UFO’s that the US military cannot explain, signals from space that make you say “Wow!” – and what about faces on Mars and Jupiter’s ghost? Lots of spooky things going on in the universe: we will share many stories of these but also spooky real-world topics such as Near-Earth Asteroids and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Tickets : €10 / €7
Admission from 7:45 p.m.
Number of seats is limited. Advance booking required.
Please make your booking in good time.

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Special Lecture: Let’s talk Astrophysics

Lecture in English by Dr. Ioannis Kamaretsos (Munich Public Observatory)

Friday, October 17th 2025, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

This lecture is part of a series on selected topics in Astrophysics. Let us become acquainted with recent discoveries, while placing focus on the ideas behind the published works. Following the 50min-long lecture, we may continue with discussions on the rooftop area.

Topic: Large scale structure of the Universe, and the curious case of a statistical anomaly in the rotational direction of spiral galaxies in deep surveys from HST and JWST. Is the Universe rotating in its entirety? Bonus question: could our known Universe lie in a black hole, within a parent universe?

credits: handmadewriting

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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory – the first of its kind

Lecture in English by Paul Salazar (Munich Public Observatory)

Friday, 26 September 2025, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

The talk will focus on the design, development and first images from the observatory, and will provide insight how this kind of system brings a unique perspective into the modern world of scientific discovery of the cosmos.

The 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin Observatory, equipped with the LSST Camera — the largest digital camera ever built — will take detailed images of the southern hemisphere sky for 10 years, covering the entire sky every few nights and creating an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition, time-lapse record — the largest astronomical movie of all time. This unique movie will bring the night sky to life, yielding a treasure trove of discoveries: asteroids and comets, pulsating stars, and supernova explosions.

credits: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/B. Quint

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⇒ deutsche Version des Vortrags 4 Wochen später am Freitag, 24. Oktober, um 20 Uhr!

Colloquium – Let´s talk Astrophysics

moderated by Dr. Ioannis Kamaretsos (Volkssternwarte München)

Friday, 20. June 2025, 8pm
Volkssternwarte München, Rosenheimer Str. 145h, 81671 München

This is part of a lecture series on selected topics in Astrophysics. Let us become acquainted with discoveries in Astrophysics. The focus is on the ideas and theory behind the published work.

Following a 50min lecture, we will continue with discussions.

Event topic: ‚Exploding‘ stars and T Coronae Borealis: Can you predict the next outburst? T Coronae Borealis, a.k.a. the „Blaze Star“, is a recurrent Nova located in the constellation Northern Crown. It is a binary system which undergoes huge brightness increases every ca 80 years, making it a unique astronomical event.

Image: handmadewriting

Free entry
Advance booking recommended; limited number of seats.

Tickets

Colloquium – Let´s talk Astrophysics

moderated by Dr. Ioannis Kamaretsos (Volkssternwarte München)

Tuesday, 27. Mai 2025, 8pm
Volkssternwarte München, Rosenheimer Str. 145h, 81671 München

This is a reoccurring colloquium, on slightly more advanced topics in Astrophysics. Let us become acquainted with important scientific discoveries. The focus is on the ideas and theory behind the published work.

Following a 45min lecture, we will continue with discussions.

Event topic: Light deflection by Gravity.

Case 1: The Einstein ring of galaxy NGC6505

Case 2: Multiple images of a distant Supernova

Image: handmadewriting

Free entry
Advance booking recommended; limited number of seats.

Tickets

The Most Distant Planetary Probes to leave Earth

Lecture in English by Paul Salazar (Munich Public Observatory)

Friday, 6 June 2025, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Rosenheimer Str. 145h

Humans have pushed the frontiers of exploration in space by sending probes to the edge of our Solar System and beyond. Just how far have we traveled, and what have we seen along the way? How do we keep in touch with the most distant objects, and what is left to learn from these probes? We will look at the very old Pioneer and Voyager missions past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, as well as the New Horizons mission past Pluto and into the Kuiper Belt.

credits: curiousmatrix.com

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⇒ deutsche Version des Vortrags 4 Wochen später am Freitag, 4. Juli, um 20 Uhr!

Astrophotography – Journey and Techniques

Lecture in English by Egor Goryachev (Astrophotographer)

Friday, 23 Mai 2025, 8 p.m.

As many of us live in big cities, we can’t even see the stars and the Milky Way from our neighbourhoods as light pollution obstructs our view. Africa and Namibia in particular, is one of the sparsely populated areas of the world where the impact of light pollution is minimal. You don’t have to climb high into the mountains to chase the Milky Way. Even on the flat surface of Africa, you can see thousands of stars on a clear night. And what you see is incredible. Over the last 3 years I have explored many different places in Namibia. Spending the night under the stars is a great experience that you want to repeat again and again.

If the skies are clear, guests are invited to visit our rooftop observatory after the talk and enjoy the views with our telescopes.

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Our Astrochemical Origins

Lecture in English

by Prof. Dr. Paola Caselli (Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics)

Friday, 11 April 2025, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Rosenheimer Str. 145h

Our Solar System was born from a dark and cold cloud made out of gas and small dust particles. Thanks to powerful telescopes, we can now study in detail these clouds, their chemical ingredients, and their evolution toward stars and planets. We can then reconstruct our origins. In this lecture, I’ll present a journey through space and time starting from interstellar clouds and ending in our Solar System. The dawn of organic molecules, the formation of stars and planets, and the first steps towards life will be unveiled.

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI