Lecture by Tycho Brahe Medal winner FRANK EISENHAUER
University of Southern Denmark, 11. November 2021, at 10:00 the DIAS Auditorium.
In 2022 it’s 450 years ago Tycho Brahe discovered his famous Supernova on November 11, 1572. The observation placed the Danish astronomer as the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts and led to the founding of modern astronomy as an exact science.
“Tyche Brahe 2022” marks a year of celebration of Tycho Brahe’s discovery initiated by a lecture of Tycho Brahe Medalist Dr. Frank Eisenhauer. His lecture is titled Follow Tycho Brahe: Precision Astronomy with Interferometry.
Frank Eisenhauer was awarded 2021 Tycho Brahe Medal for his leadership and research, which revolutionized the study of exoplanets, super-massive black holes, and star forming galaxies in the Early Universe.
Over the last 20 years he has led the development of two major, game-changing instruments for ground-based infrared astronomy, SINFONI and GRAVITY at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT); these have led to fundamental results on massive black holes, active galactic nuclei, galaxy and star formation.
Frank Eisenhauer not only was the heart and soul of most aspects of the design and development of these complex and innovative instruments but also has been a leader of their scientific exploitation, and lead-author on several of the seminal papers.
The lecture is introduced by associate professor Mads Toudal Frandsen, SDU Galaxy, and Vice-Chair of the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy.
The lecture is organized by the University Library of Southern Denmark.
Sign up: helch@bib.sdu.dk
Frank Eisenhauer
Dr. Frank Eisenhauer resides at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany. He is PI of the GRAVITY project which required major breakthroughs in fast-read-out imaging detectors, cryogenic operation with single mode fibers and integrated optics, laser metrology tracing the entire beam path, and phase-referenced, dual-beam operation. GRAVITY has been in operations on Paranal since 2016. Both SINFONI and GRAVITY are part of the instrument suite employed in the discovery and characterization of the Galactic Center Black Hole, which led to the Nobel Prize 2020 in Physics.