Main topic of nuclear astrophysics is the synthesis of the chemical elements in stars and supernovae explosions. Over the last 50 years powerful telescopes have extended our view into the Universe enormously, unveiling a wealth of detailed information on a variety of objects, from the oldest stars, which formed shortly after the big bang, very distant galaxies and globular clusters to pulsars, black holes and supernova explosions.

Extensive astrophysical models are used for understanding the multitude of observations and to solve the enigma of the evolution of the universe.

Nuclear physics data play a key role in these theoretical efforts since they determine the energy production in stars, the stellar life span, and the continuous production of the chemical elements.

Nuclear Astrophysics provides the necessary data through difficult laboratory measurements. The Helmholtz Research Centre Karlsruhe contributes substantially to this field with experimental studies of nucleosynthesis reactions occuring in red giant stars and in supernova explosions.

• The Jina Webseite (Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics).
• The time-of-flight spectrometer n_TOF at CERN.
• EFNUDAT - European Facilities for Nuclear Data Measurements