Universitäts-Sternwarte München

Fakultät für Physik der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Astrophysical lab course
for Master’s students

Winter semester 2025 / 2026

P 2.1/2 · WP 16.1/2 · WP 17.1/2
P 2.1 · WP 2.1/2 · WP 1.1

Astrophysical basic lab · observational and instrumental lab · numerical lab

General information:

Places and Times:

Tuesday 13:30–18:00, main lecture hall, ground floor, University Observatory, Scheinerstraße 1.

Briefing for winter semester 2025 / 2026:

Tuesday, 14th of October 2025, 13:30. Attendance at this meeting is mandatory for all participants.

Date of first lab:

Tuesday, 21st of October 2025, 13:30.

This lab course is for:

Master’s students in astrophysics and physics only.

Important: only the astrophysical “basic” lab P2 is mandatory for students in the Master’s program in astrophysics. All topics in this lab build on the lecture P1 “Introduction to Advanced Astrophysics”. We therefore recommend that you take this mandatory lab course only after successfully completing the introductory lecture P1. We highly recommend doing the instrumental/observational or numerical lab in the first semester and the astrophysical basic lab in the second semester! Students in the Master’s program in physics can mix experiments from all three labs (depending on availability, no guarantee).

In case you have questions or need further information regarding these lab courses:

Please contact Dr. Arno Riffeser (arri_at_usm.lmu.de).

Further information:

• How the lab course works.
• VNC for the labs (version WiSe2025) (see also here).
• Lab structure, procedure, and guidelines for your lab report and feedback (version WiSe2025).
• Here you can obtain all the lab manuals.
• Lab schedule for the summer semester 2025 (lab experiments and supervisors).
• This is a cover sheet that you should fill in for all your lab reports.