August 25th 2008: Our XMM-Newton group at AIP reported the most massive galaxy cluster known yet in the distant universe (Lamer et al. 2008). It is quite exceptional to find a structure as luminous as 1.3x10^45 erg/s at a redshift as early as z=1, and an interesting cornerstone for modeling the large scale structure in the universe. We identified this particularly old object by comparing X-ray emissions from the interstellar gas in a cluster to absent data in an optical survey, and then cross-checking by extra-sensitive optical observation with the Large Binocular Telescope. There are press releases by ESA (english) and AIP (german).
August 1st 2008: I moved from the XMM-Newton project at the Astrophysical Institute (group of Axel Schwope) in Potsdam to the Thüringer Landessternwarte in Tautenburg to join the new european low frequency radio interferometer LOFAR.
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hoeft (at) tls-tautenburg.de
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