Extragalactic Astronomy Group

of the University Observatory Munich



The group is led by Dr. Ralf Bender, full professor at the LMU physics department and director at the Max-Planck Institut fuer extraterrestrische Physik. The research activities are centered on structure and evoultion of galaxies, covering the fields of stellar dynamics, stellar populations and galaxy formation from point of view of opitical and near-infrared astronomy. We also use large survey projects to trace the large scale structure of the universe due to the distribution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Hard- and software activities involve the construction of optical and near-infrared instruments. Education is part of the physics and astrophysics courses at the LMU, including PhD studies within the IMPRS school.

  • USM-members and...
  • and those at MPE
  • Master thesis and IMPRS PhD Projects of our group
    Publications

  • Populaere Darstellung unserer Arbeit

    • Scientific fields of activity

    		 Conversions...
  • Dynamical models and dark matter in elliptical and S0 galaxies
    in clusters and the field
  • The redshift evolution of galaxies in clusters
  • The distances and peculiar velocities of cluster ellipticals
    in two superclusters (part of the EFAR collaboration)
  • The MUNICS near infrared survey (und its follow-up MUNICS-Deep)
  • The FORS deep field and its high-z probe of the universe
  • Old objects at high-redshift
  • The Photometric redshifts as a tool for our surveys
  • Week lensing reconstruction of cluster mass profiles
    and the gravitational telescope to study high-z galaxies
  • Pixel-Lensing towards M31 Novae in M31
  • The stellar populations, metallicities and kinematics of dwarf galaxies
  • Black holes in the center of giant galaxies

    Part of this work is supported through the
    Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 375 Astro-particle physics
    and
    Schwerpunkt 1177
    of the German Science Foundation (DFG).

    Instrumental fields of activity

  • The 9m- Hobby-Eberly-Telescope, Texas
  • The two FORS spectrographs at the VLT
  • OmegaCam Project for the VST telescope at Paranal
  • The Wendelstein-Observatorium and its CCD camera
    email: hopp @ usm.uni-muenchen.de [04/11/2005]