International Summer Internship 2025
July 21 until August 8
Each summer, Haus der Astronomie offers an International Summer Internship Program. Some of the participants join us directly via the International Summer Science School Heidelberg, an exchange program by the City of Heidelberg for pupils from Heidelberg's partner cities or partner institutions. Other prospective participants apply directly to Haus der Astronomie.
The summer internship is designed for pupils in the final years of high school. If you have already started university, please have a look at the various offers of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) for predoctoral students.
During their three-week stay, participants work on a variety of astrophysical observations and experiments. Just as in professional research, there is no fixed time-table, and participants are fairly free to follow their own ideas.
The common languages among the participants are English and Python.
What will you be working on?
Depending on the participating scientists, the topic of the year's internship will be decided a few months before the internship starts. In past years, we had our students look at data from the Kepler Space Telescope to determine the properties of exoplanets, or look at galaxy data from an ESO survey, or study the expansion of the universe using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or use data from the Gaia DR2 data release to study the properties of stars and stellar clusters.
How do you apply?
Simple: Prepare the following documents and upload them using our dedicated application form: a letter (between 0.5 and 1 pages) outlining your motivation, your interest in astronomy, previous activities and experience, why you are interested in this internship and, if applicable, any science-related career plans you might have, a brief CV (including your year and month of birth and the year and month you expect to finish high school), your latest school report and, if possible, a letter of recommendation from a science teacher or informal science educator who knows you well. Please note that we are only accepting applications via the application form.
What about costs? And accommodation?
There is no direct fee for the internship. You will, however, need to arrange for your own accomodation. There are several hostels in Heidelberg, or you could try to rent a room from a student, who is away during the summer. If you have trouble arranging for accommodation, or are in need of financial support, please contact us once you have been accepted into the program, and we will try to assist you.
How should I prepare?
Glad you asked! Three weeks, it turns out, is not a long time to pursue your own research project. We strongly recommend that you prepare for the internship, so as to make the most of the three weeks you are here. Our go-to programming language of choice is Python, so it is definitely recommended that you familiarise yourself with the basics of that language. Then, dive into the Beginner's Guide to Working with Astronomical Data to learn something about the methods we will use to analyse our data.