831 search results for “astronomy” in the Public website
-
First direct detection of a brown dwarf with a radio telescope
Astronomers at ASTRON and Leiden University have used the LOFAR radio telescope to discover a 'brown dwarf' – a faint object more massive than Jupiter, but significantly less massive than the Sun. The discovery of the object dubbed Elegast, opens up a new path that uses radio telescopes to discover…
-
Leiden University and University of Edinburgh to deepen collaboration
A delegation from the University of Edinburgh recently visited Leiden University to deepen their collaboration. What makes Edinburgh such an attractive partner?
-
5 years Quantum Rules lab: ‘The best part is when you hear the penny drop with a student’
Quantum Rules lab van Leiden Universiteit biedt proefjes en experimenten voor middelbare scholieren om te leren over kwantum natuurkunde. Henk Buisman vertelt over het 5 jarige jubileum.
-
Pim Overgaauw: ‘As Institute Manager, you are the spider in the web’
Pim Overgaauw is at his best when he can support others. His new position as Institute Manager of the Mathematical Institute is therefore a perfect fit. ‘My main goal is to ensure that our mathematicians can focus on the maths.’
-
It takes two (or more) to build a telescope
How do stars and galaxies form? What is dark matter? To answer these and other questions, we need increasingly large telescopes. And to build these, we need international partnerships. A series on the impact of collaboration.
-
Marie Curie grant for dark matter
Leiden Observatory is going to use a new technique to carry out calculations on gravitational lensing measurements. They will do this is the context of research into the formation of elliptical galaxies. Alessandro Sonnenfeld (University of Tokyo) who developed this technique joined the research team…
-
Astronomers see two planets vacuuming around young star
Astronomers led by Leiden astronomer Sebastiaan Haffert have directly imaged two planets that are gravitationally carving out a wide gap within a planet-forming disk surrounding a young star. While over a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged, this is only the second multi-planet system to be p…
-
Astronomical airplane trails do not fade but lighten up
An unexpected phenomenon in a merger of a cluster of galaxies. An international team of astronomers led by Francesco de Gasperin has witnessed a gas tail of a galaxy, that slowly extinguished, but then lightened up again
-
Sense Jan van der Molen new scientific director LION: ‘We strive for scientific excellence as well as a healthy work-life balance’
Sense Jan van der Molen is vanaf 1 maart de nieuwe wetenschappelijk directeur van het Leiden Instituut voor Onderzoek in de Natuurkunde.
-
‘Technology shouldn’t shape our future; we should’
Technology holds so much promise – from self-driving cars to enhanced physical performance from smart implants under the skin. But we should not let ourselves be caught off guard. That is the message of Bart Custers, Professor of Law and Data Science in his inaugural lecture on 21 May. ‘We don’t talk…
-
Children learn early on that scientists are men
When children were asked to draw a scientist, a bald, middle-aged man in a white coat was most often depicted. Why is that? A group of Leiden University science communication researchers discovered that children already get this impression in primary school. Published in PLOS ONE on 16 November.
-
Open Day: 'What's the right degree programme for me?'
Leiden's city centre, bathed in autumn sunshine and teeming with visitors. On 14 October, several thousands of students and their parents came to visit the University's Open Day. We spoke to a number of students at the information fair in the Pieterskerk; each of them had their own questions, doubts…
-
Erasmus+ grant for 13 exchange projects
Thirteen Leiden University exchange projects have been awarded an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility grant. The total award of around 450,000 euros will enable 103 students and staff to go on an exchange.
-
Hyperlinks to antiquity
Until the 18th century, Latin annotations of well-known classical texts were an important source of scientific knowledge, but over the course of time the texts lost their authority. Classical scholar Maarten Jansen re-examines the annotations of Virgil's Aeneid. PhD defence 20 September.
-
Artificial brain helps Gaia satellite catch speeding stars
With the help of software that mimics a human brain, ESA’s Gaia satellite spotted six stars zipping at high speed from the centre of our Galaxy to its outskirts. This could provide key information about some of the most obscure regions of the Milky Way.
-
Galaxy without dark matter discovered
Astronomers led by Pieter van Dokkum have discovered a galaxy that barely contains any dark matter, which actually proves that dark matter does indeed exist. The research results will be published this week in Nature.
-
More insight with light
The new programme Synoptic Optics, funded by the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences, will develop new optical techniques. Researcher Frans Snik and Professor of Experimental Astrophysics Christoph Keller from Leiden Observatory will test novel approaches to monitor air pollution and discover…
-
Halo of gas shows how exoplanets are slowly losing their atmosphere
Twee teams of astronomers, including from the universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, have discovered how hot gas giants are surrounded by large halos of thin helium gas, an indication that they are slowly losing their atmosphere. The helium, that was recently seen for the first time by the Hubble space…
-
Physics student Hidde Stoffels investigates dark matter in outstanding undergraduate thesis
He makes music, goes to the athletics track twice a week and, according to his supervisor, has done his research so well that it would not be out of place in a PhD research. Physics and astronomy student Hidde Stoffels' undergraduate research on the properties of dark matter is of such high quality…
-
Do we have a standard model of cosmology?
Lecture, Oort lecture
-
The Gaia telescope: mapping 1 billion stars with 1 billion pixels
Lecture, Kaiser Lente Lezing
- Open Day 2018
- Pale Blue Dot Symposium: 30 Years of Pale Blue Dot
-
Zooming in on Black Holes with a telescope the size of planet Earth
Lecture, Kaiser Spring Lecture
- Night of the Night
-
Seeking balance in a changing world and university
The world around us is changing. What does that mean for the future of Europe, on this turbulent world stage? And what does it mean for our teaching, and for the expectations that Leiden University has of its students? These were the key questions during the opening of the 2018-2019 academic year on…
- Leiden Observatory Festival - Dive into the Universe
- Museum Night
-
The road to the beginning
Exhibition
-
Supermassive Black Holes and Where to Find Them
Lecture, Oort lecture
- LWSK presents: The laserinterferometer Space Antenna
-
Research
The research of the Mathematical Institute is driven by the curiosity of its members and has many internal and external connections. It can be characterised as fundamental but with an open attitude towards applications.
-
Study and the labour market
If you are going to study, it is not only important that you like the study programme. It’s also good to already have an idea of which professions you might enjoy.
-
First images from the James Webb telescope
Lecture
-
‘SRON and South-Holland can reinforce each other well’
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is moving. In 2021, the Utrecht branch will settle in South-Holland. Pieter Dieleman is group leader at SRON. He tells why the upcoming move is such a good idea: ‘SRON is a connecting factor between Delft and Leiden.’
-
Spinoza Prize for Leiden statistician Aad van der Vaart
Aad van der Vaart, professor of stochastics at Leiden University, has been awarded the NWO Spinoza Prize for his groundbreaking research in statistics. Van der Vaart conducts fundamental research on models that can help, for instance, to identify genes that play a role in cancer.
-
Prince Constantijn: research on big data urgently needed
Policy makers urgently need scientists’ help with the phenomenon of big data. This was the view expressed by Prince Constantijn, speaking at the opening of the Leiden Centre of Data Science, the virtual centre for research on big data at Leiden University.
-
New KiDS result: Universe 10 per cent more homogeneous than assumed
New results from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) show that the Universe is almost 10 percent more homogeneous than previously thought. The new KiDS map was created using the partly Dutch OmegaCAM on ESO's VLT Survey Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Northern Chile. An international team of astronomers from,…
-
Eleven Vidi grants for Leiden
NWO has awarded eleven Leiden researchers a Vidi grant of 800,000 euros. The research subjects range from Cicero and muscle dystrophy to the archaeology of bogs.
-
Top EU official Paquet meets researchers from Leiden
Jean-Eric Paquet, a Director-General at the European Commission, visited Leiden University on 20 February. He was impressed by the researchers’ drive, the wide range of topics that they research and the strong collaboration with Leiden Bio Science Park.
-
Discoverer of the Year, Best Dissertation and Education prize 2015
During the Faculty of Science New Year's reception, Daniël Rozen was named Discoverer of the year 2015. Nienke van der Marel and Koen van der Maaden both won the prize for the best dissertation and Jeroen van Smeden was named Best Teacher of 2015.
-
Combining research and a good cause: Tutoring programme concludes successfully
More than a course. That was the aim of the Leiden Tutoring programme. Through weekly tutoring lessons, students did not just earn five EC. They helped Dutch primary-school children from neighbourhoods with a low socioeconomic status.
-
Is there oxygen on exoplanets? New telescope finds out
To what extent does exoplanet Proxima b resemble our Earth? And is there some form of life present? Astronomers hope to find answers to these questions with the new European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). An NWO research grant of €18 million will allow a Dutch consortium to continue building instruments…
- Teacher of the Year 2017 throws students in at the deep end with supervision
-
Got a question about science? Ask Leiden!
Due to its success, the Leiden2022 Q&A has been extended and is looking for even more thought-provoking, interesting or unusual questions.
-
Dust cloud from two colliding ice planets dims light of parent star
For the first time, an international group of astronomers have seen the heat glow of two ice giant planets colliding. They could also observe the resultant dust cloud move in front of the parent star several years later. Led by Leiden astronomer Matthew Kenworthy, they monitored the star's brightness…
-
Faculty of Science opens academic year with live stream in homely setting
From a white leather armchair, on which Barack Obama once sat, Dean Michiel Kreutzer opened the academic year. This time not with visitors, but completely corona-proof via a live stream. In a homely setting, Kreutzer spoke with several guests, including Covid-19 researcher Thomas Hankemeier and brand…
-
Freon-40 may not be a useful marker of life
Observations made with the ALMA telescope in Chile and ESA’s Rosetta mission, have detected the faint molecular fingerprint of methyl chloride in gas, a chemical commonly produced by industrial biological processes on Earth, around both an infant star and a comet. Methyl chloride, also known as Freon-40,…
-
Young Star Maite Boden broadens her horizon
At the beginning of 2020, Maite Boden became the first student ever to receive the Young Star award. She received the award for her contribution to research into the notorious ghost particle: the neutrino. With her master's degree in the pocket as well, she is now looking for a job in data analysis.…
-
Kids become real scientists with Lil'Scientist
Children are perfect scientists: they are bursting with curiosity, they want to know how the world works and they go exploring every day. Yet many children barely get a chance to be engaged in science. A number of scientists from the Young Academy want to change that. They have received 150,000 euros…