Gunther Witzel
Astronomer
I am a staff scientist in the department for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, working with Prof. A. Zensus. Before joining the MPIfR, I worked for more than six years at UCLA in the Galactic Center Group of Prof. A. Ghez, Nobel laureat of 2020. For my PhD projects I worked with Prof. A. Eckart at the 1. Pysikalisches Insitut of the University of Cologne.
My main interest is focused on the central regions of galaxies, in particular of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. I am an infrared astronomer by trade, working on observational methods to observe stars on their orbits around the supermassive black hole (SMBH) a the Galactic Center, Sagittarius A*, and to study the accretion process onto the SMBH itsself. I am working on a wide range of topics, from post-processing methods of NIR polarization data, precise astrometry and photometry with adaptive optics in crowded fields, modeling of radiative processes linked to the accretion onto Sagittarius A* and statistical methods of time series analysis in general. Recently, I have extended my scope to multi-wavelegth observations including the radio and mm/submm regime and VLBI studies. I am member of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, the Galactic Center Orbit Initiative, the M2FINDERS collaboration, and the Spitzer/IRAC and Chandra Sgr A* monitoring campaigne.
Phone:
+49 228 525 358
Email: gwitzel (at) mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
Address: Max-Planck-Insitut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
