Research
Comprehensive information about the research topics in the Solar System School is available from the list of completed PhD theses, the list of open PhD projects, from specialised queries to publication data bases filtering for peer-revied articles in scientific journals by IMPRS students, via a list of researchers acting as faculty members in the IMPRS and of course directly from the research group pages of the MPS.
The physics of Solar system science comprises several branches of geophysics and astrophysics: earth and planetary sciences, space physics, solar and stellar physics. The objects of interest in Solar System Research are the Sun as the central star of our Solar System, its planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and their rings and moons, its minor bodies including asteroids and comets, trans-Neptunian objects and Kuiper-belt objects. Ground-based observations and space-based observatories performing spectroscopy or polarimetry and space missions with remote-sensing instruments or in-site measurement capabilities allow to study our and similar stellar/planetary systems. Solar physicists analyse and interpret data for example on solar or stellar interiors with a focus on dynamo processes, or on the solar atmosphere with its sunspots as one visible manifestation of solar activity. Computational fluid dynamics, magnetohydrodynamics or radiative transfer models advance a theoretical understanding of the phenomena observed. Investigations of the interiors of stars use the techniques of helioseismology or asteroseismology in combination with stellar modelling. Planetary scientists obtain information on other celestial bodies, for example through space missions such as Rosetta or Dawn, and construct theoretical analytical models or numerical simulations for the interpretation of their data of planetary ionospheres, atmospheres, surfaces or interiors.
