Astronomy at Highest Angular Resolution - Next Generation Interferometry with GRAVITY+

The GRAVITY experiment at the European Very Large Telescope
Interferometer has transformed high angular resolution astronomy, now
routinely offering milli-arcsecond resolution imaging, a sensitivity
increase by factor thousands over previous interferometers, 30-100
micro-arcsecond astrometry, and micro-arcsecond differential
spectro-astrometry. Our presentation takes us from exoplanets all the
way to distant quasars, with special focus on the Galactic Center. The
GRAVITY+ upgrade is about to boost interferometry to the next level,
opening up the extragalactic sky, and providing ever higher contrast for
observations of exoplanets, and more sensitive observations of the
Galactic Center. We will present first results and discuss the discovery
space opening up with GRAVITY+, e.g. the detailed view on Black Holes at cosmic dawn, the detection and characterization of exoplanets and their atmospheres, and the spin of the Galactic Center black hole.

Speaker: 
Frank Einsenhauer (MPE)
Place: 
KIAA-auditorium
Host: 
Shangguan Jinyi
Time: 
Monday, October 14, 2024 - 1:30PM to Monday, October 14, 2024 - 2:30PM
Biography: 
Frank Eisenhauer is scientific member of the Max Planck Society and director at the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Garching near Munich, where he is leading the development and science exploration of large astronomical instruments and experiments. Two of them, SINFONI and GRAVITY, are part of the instrument suite employed in the discovery and characterization of the Galactic Center Black Hole, for which Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel and Prof. Dr. Andrea Ghez have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.