Supermassive black holes: What we know, what we don’t know yet, and what we’ll never know

Lecture in English by Catarina Aydar (MPE)

Friday, 9 October 2026, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Str., 81671 München

Black holes are mathematical objects. They appear in the formulas of general relativity as zeros and infinities, illustrating one thing above all: mathematics goes haywire there. Albert Einstein thought it must be a mistake and that black holes „do not exist in physical reality.“ But black holes are more than bizarre mathematical solutions; they are real and responsible for some of the most energetic events in the Universe.

Astronomers have already observed millions of black holes. Indirectly, because black holes can only be located by their gravitational effect on stellar orbits or gas in their vicinity. One of the most surprising findings is that black holes are essential for understanding the evolution of the Universe. But what are black holes? How do they form? How big can they get? How do they live? Can they also die? Will we fall into it at some point? What happens inside a black hole? – And: do scientists know all the answers to these questions?

Catarina Aydar from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) will take us on a journey to the supermassive black holes. She will show us what they are and tell us about their most beautiful secrets.

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Astronomy Quiz Night

From the series ‘Curiosity Meets the Universe’
Saturday evening at the Munich Public Observatory

Lecture in English by Dr. Ioannis Kamaretsos (VSW)
Saturday, 12 September 2026, 7 p.m.
Munich Public Observatory, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

Test your intuition, observation skills, and knowledge. A series of quiz questions, ordered from elementary to more challenging will be presented, each preceded by an introduction. These are not your average ‚pub quiz‘ questions, but focus on physical intuition and less known astronomical trivia.
Following the event, we will continue on the rooftop for an observation using telescopes.

Tickets: 10 / 7 Euro. Advance booking recommended due to the limited number of seats.

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The Twin Paradox and its resolution

Lecture in English

Boris Lohner (Munich Public Observatory)

Friday, 24 July 2026, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Straße, 81671 Munich

Explanations of the twin paradox sometimes give the impression that special relativity is defective and that this „defect“ requires general relativity to be „repaired“ – or give the impression that time dilation is not real but a mere effect of observation. In this talk it is shown how the twin paradox can be resolved in a consistent way while staying within special relativity.

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⇒ deutsche Version des Vortrags am Freitag, 17. Juli, um 20 Uhr!

Journey Through New Zealand’s Night Skies

Lecture in English by Egor Goryachev (Astrophotographer)

Friday, 3rd July 2026, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Straße, 81671 München

New Zealand is renowned for its breathtaking landscapes and for offering some of the most pristine night skies in the Southern Hemisphere. Thanks to its low population density, light pollution is minimal, and in certain remote areas you can even experience truly dark conditions, where the sky appears in its purest form. What stunned me most was how rapidly the scenery changes. Every half hour of driving reveals an entirely new landscape, giving the country an extraordinary sense of diversity within relatively short distances. If you’re traveling to New Zealand with astrophotography in mind, the South Island should be your top priority. The regions around Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo are particularly exceptional. They are located within a designated International Dark Sky Reserve, providing some of the darkest and clearest skies on Earth. Because New Zealand sits further south than other famous dark-sky destinations such as Namibia, the Atacama Desert, or parts of Australia, southern constellations and celestial objects rise higher above the horizon. Even the Milky Way reveals a slightly different perspective, one that’s difficult to experience elsewhere. The idea of capturing these unique views filled me with excitement and that’s exactly what I hope to share with you.

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

Credits: Egor Goryachev

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Unlocking a sea secret: the Antikythera Mechanism

Lecture by Dr. Markos Skoulatos (TU Munich) – in English

Friday, 8 Mai 2026, 8 p.m.

Without any doubt, the oldest computer of mankind, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, is the greatest technological achievement of antiquity. A century was necessary in order to reveal its secrets. What is it though, that inspires until now four generations of scientists?
In this talk, we will navigate from its discovery by sponge divers, up to the latest word of modern technology in order to solve its puzzle. I will analyse its functions, epicyclic and differential gearings, the indications it gives us and how to read them. We will see how astronomy, mathematics and engineering, all come together at a small portable mechanical device. At the end, there will be an opportunity to see from close my real model reconstruction. Our purpose is to familiarise with this “mysterious” construction as well as to individually discover what it is that inspires, still, despite 2 millennia from its original construction.

More info: http://www.eternalgadgetry.com

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Exoplanets & the Search for Life in the Nearby Universe

Lecture in English by Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng (LMU)

Friday, 27 March 2026, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

Exoplanets are planets orbiting other stars, beyond the Solar System. The first exoplanet was found in 1995 by my former Swiss colleagues in Geneva. Since then, more than 6000 exoplanets have been discovered. A major revelation is how common small exoplanets are: between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. A current quest of exoplanet science is to use the atmospheres of these exoplanets to understand if they are geologically active and/or are habitable using both the James Webb Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. I will describe the long road towards using next-generation telescopes to detect biosignatures on Earth-like exoplanets, thus completing the modern version of the Copernican revolution started by Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor in 1995.

credits: NASA (R. Hurt)

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The Weather Forecast That You, Hopefully, Will Never Need!

Lecture in English by Can Akin (University of Bern, LMU)

Friday, 13 March 2026, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Gisela-Stein-Str. Ecke Ludwig-Jung-Bogen, 81671 München

Over the past thirty years astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars, worlds unlike anything in our Solar System. But how can we study the atmosphere of a planet we cannot visit, barely see, and that even our most powerful telescopes usually cannot resolve as a dot? By measuring tiny changes in starlight we can not only detect these planets, but also identify gases and clouds in their atmospheres. In my research I focus on two particular types of objects: hot Jupiters, gas giants heated to extreme temperatures by their parent star, and free-floating brown dwarfs, objects heavier than planets but too small to shine like stars. Together they reveal remarkable weather, including supersonic winds and clouds made from rock-forming minerals. In this talk, I will show how we combine astronomical observations with computer simulations to understand how these atmospheres work.

Making sense of these distant climates requires more than observations alone. We use atmospheric circulation models, originally developed for predicting weather on Earth, and adapt them to conditions far beyond anything found here. These simulations reproduce global winds and heat transport and allow us to create synthetic observations that telescopes can directly compare with measurements. By combining data and models we can infer atmospheric composition, understand how these worlds form and evolve, and place our own Solar System within the broader population of planets in our galaxy.

credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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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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