Potsdam Observatory

Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam

Main building in Babelsberg
Chairman	Matthias Steinmetz
Staff	approx. 140
Location	Potsdam-Babelsberg
Website	http://www.aip.de

Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is a German research institute. It is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory Potsdam (AOP) founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. The AIP was founded in 1992, in a re-structuring following the German Reunification.

The AIP is privately funded and member of the Leibniz Association. It is located in Babelsberg in the state of Brandenburg, just west of Berlin, though the Einstein Tower solar observatory and the great refractor telescope on Telegrafenberg in Potsdam belong to the AIP.

The key topics of the AIP are cosmic magnetic fields (magnetohydrodynamics) on various scales and extragalactic astrophysics. Astronomical and astrophysical fields studied at the AIP range from solar and stellar physics to stellar and galactic evolution to cosmology.

The institute also develops research technology in the fields of spectroscopy and robotic telescopes. It is a partner of the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, has erected robotic telescopes in Tenerife and the Antarctic, develops astronomical instrumentation for large telescopes such as the VLT of the ESO. Furthermore, work on several e-Science projects are carried out at the AIP.