Multiple stars, that is two or more stars composing a gravitationally bound system, are common in the universe.

The high velocity tail of the total velocity distribution of stars provides essential insight into fundamental properties of the Galaxy.

Promotor: P. T. de Zeeuw, Co-promotor: N. Neumayer; G. van de Ven

‘What if we switch off all the lights one evening? That idea crossed my mind from time to time. And when I mentioned it to a taxi driver one day, he said: “Oh, you mean: lights out, stars on!” That’s not completely true, of course, because the stars are always on, but his phrase summed up the idea n…

Until the 1990s, the only known planets were those in our Solar System. Three decades later, several thousand exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, and substantial efforts have been made to explore these strange new worlds through spectroscopic analyses of their atmosphe…

An international team of astronomers, including Leiden’s Christian Ginski, has discovered previously unobserved structures in a debris disk around a nearby star. Article published in Nature on 8 October.

Of the 17 Rubicon grants that NWO recently awarded, three have gone to researchers at Leiden University. They can spend a longer period of time doing research at an institute abroad.

In 2015, Jorryt Matthee thought he discovered an extremely distant galaxy called CR7, which lacked elements heavier than helium. Three years later, he shows with measurements using the ALMA telescope that the galaxy does have carbon after all, and even in normal concentrations. The American Astronomical…