1,426 search results for “telescopes and instrumentation” in the Public website
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‘We’re a spaceship with limited supplies’
From the discovery of exoplanets to the hunt for extraterrestrial life. At the Astronomy Gala on 17 December in the concert hall in Leiden, astronomers looked back, but above all ahead. With King Willem-Alexander as guest of honour.
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UV radiation from massive stars prevents formation of Jupiter-like planet
An international team of scientists, including Xander Tielens of Leiden Observatory, has used space telescope Hubble and the ALMA observatory to show that UV radiation from massive stars can prevent planets from forming. The researchers publish their findings on 1 March in the journal Science.
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Astronomers see disk around young super-Jupiter which may form moons
An international team of astronomers led by scientists from Leiden Observatory has for the first time characterised a dust disk surrounding a young super-Jupiter, which is either a giant planet or brown dwarf. They detected infrared emission from the disk which might indicate that moons may have formed.…
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Prying eyes on radio skies: pushing the high-resolution low-frequency frontier with LOFAR
In this thesis we push the boundaries of high-resolution imaging at radio frequencies between 100 and 200 MHz. Using the International LOFAR Telescope that spans across Europe we achieve sub-arcsecond angular resolution.
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Searching for the sibling of the earth
Are there other planets like the earth, and will there also be life? Astronomers study planets around stars other than the sun, with the aim to find out what kind of gasses their atmospheres are made up with.
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The Observatory
On this section of the website you can find more information about the Old Observatory and the current astronomy research institute.
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Neutrinos From the Milky Way
Promotor: M. de Jong, Co-Promotor: Samtleben
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Old Observatory Leiden
The Old Observatory of Leiden is the oldest existing university observatory in the world. While students from Leiden University attend lectures in the main part, the visitor center in the basement and the telescopes on the building serve the general public. On this website, you will find information…
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Webb detects icy ingredients for making potential habitable worlds
An international team of astronomers, led by Will Rocha of Leiden Observatory, using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that the key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds are present in early-stage protostars, where planets have not yet formed.
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The Gaia telescope: mapping 1 billion stars with 1 billion pixels
Lecture, Kaiser Lente Lezing
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Subsidies for high-grade research facilities
Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…
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Winter Programme Old Observatory: visit exclusively with tours
The winter season is almost here and so is the end of our exhibition More-than-Planet. From 1 November, you can only visit us with exclusive guided tours. During this tour, you will visit one of our historical telescopes and we will take you through the More-than-Planet exhibition.
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Vici grant for research on the formation of galaxies
How do galaxies form? That is what astronomer Mariska Kriek will be researching in the coming years. She received an NWO Vici grant of 1.5 million euros to study galaxies in the early universe. ‘This research uses new and unprecedented observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These allow…
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Leiden Observatory
With each discovery that is made, the universe reveals a fraction of its secrets: the most distant galaxies and quasars, the atmosphere of exoplanets, evidence of dark matter, complex molecules in space. This is what fills the days and nights of the researchers from the Leiden Observatory and their…
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Evening at the Observatory
Every month there is an opportunity to visit the Old Observatory in the evening. These open evenings consist of a lecture followed by a visit to the telescopes in the building.
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Slice of Science
The first photo of a black hole and measuring anxiety in the brain... From 13 until 22 May we're serving a free slice of science with your pizza.
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Chemistry between stars and planets
In the large gas clouds between the stars, chemical reactions take place under extreme conditions, giving rise to both small molecules, such as water and common salt, as well as large complex molecules that can serve as the building blocks of life. This is known as astrochemistry and it is something…
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A Universe aglow
Deep observations made with the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The exquisite sensitivity of MUSE allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the…
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Freya Baetens delivers inaugural lecture: “The EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI): lawful international countermeasures or violation of the WTO
Following her appointment to the Chair in EU External Economic Law earlier this year, Prof. dr. Freya Baetens addressed the academic community of Leiden University with her inaugural lecture on 27 October 2023. In a highly topical lecture, Prof. Baetens examined the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument (AC…
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Strong impetus for South Holland space research
The SRON space research institute, Leiden University and the TU Delft are appointing six researchers to jointly carry out space research. The research will focus on exoplanets, the evolution of structure in the Universe and technology for developing new pioneering space instruments.
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David Doelman
Science
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Ronald Stark and Amina Helmi join the management of NOVA
The directorate of the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) has two new members. Ronald Stark (currently at NWO) will be the new Executive Director of NOVA from 1 September. Amina Helmi (Professor of Dynamics, structure and formation of the Milky Way at the University of Groningen) will…
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Fishing for neutrinos in the Mediterranean Sea
Physicists, including Dorothea Samtleben from Leiden University, are building a giant underwater telescope to unravel the origin of neutrinos and to solve the mystery surrounding dark matter. The first detector has now been installed. Once it is finished, the telescope will be three cubic kilometres…
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Leiden planetary experts want to study seven ‘Earths’ in more detail
Astronomers have discovered seven Earth-like planets around a dwarf star in our galaxy. Three of these planets are located in the habitable zone of this star, and may contain liquid water. ‘The next step is to study the atmospheres for signs of life. In Leiden we are experts in that area,‘ says planetary…
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Exo-planets, star and planet formation
At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars (exoplanets). They study how stars and planets form. And they follow molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planet systems. This way they address…
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Capturing polarised light in the search for alien plants
A new way to decipher the light from distant worlds could give us unmistakable evidence of extraterrestrial photosynthesis, and maybe alien plants, finds astronomy author Colin Stuart in the New Scientist. In his article, he describes the work of the group led by Leiden astronomer Rob van Holstein.…
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Aggravating matters: accounting for baryons in cosmological analyses
Three major cosmology-focused missions are planned for the next decade: the Euclid space telescope, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
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Cold gas in distant galaxies
The formation and evolution of galaxies is fundamentally driven by the formation of new stars out of cold gas.
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Visit the Old Observatory
The Old Observatory is still used intensively as a university building. Yet there is still plenty to see and experience in this beautiful monument. Find out what the possibilities are here.
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Enormous supercluster of galaxies discovered
An international team of astronomers, including Leiden's Maciej Bilicki, has discovered an enormous supercluster of galaxies. The supercluster had previously been overlooked because it was obscured by our own Milky Way. The researchers are publishing their findings in the Monthly Notices of the Royal…
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Leiden PhD student discovers thin atmosphere on exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c with JWST
A group of astronomers led by Leiden PhD student Sebastian Zieba has discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c has a thin atmosphere. Although the planet is nearly identical to Venus in size and temperature, and was expected to have a thick atmosphere,…
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La Cetra Cornuta : the Horned Lyre of the Christian World
What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?
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Mariska Kriek is back – but this time as a professor
She left Leiden after her PhD and now, 14 years later, she returns as Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy. Mariska Kriek investigates how galaxies originate and evolve. And she is eagerly awaiting the launch for the new James Webb telescope: ‘The coolest things we are going to find are those we’re…
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First detailed picture of ice in planet-forming disk
An international team of astronomers led by Ardjan Sturm of the Observatory has made the first two-dimensional inventory of ice in a planet-forming disk of dust and gas surrounding a young star. The researches, including Melissa McClure, used the James Webb Space Telescope and publish their findings…
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Astronomer Jos de Boer receives Chesneau Prize for best dissertation
Astronomer Jos de Boer has received the Chesneau Prize in Nice for his research into so-called protoplanetary disks. The prize is awarded to the best astronomical dissertation in the field of high angular resolution. 'I consider it a good opportunity to talk about my research.'
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Tracing space ice and the building blocks of life
An unprecedented space telescope, an astrolab that makes space ice and molecules that may lead to the origin of life… The Ice Age project has all the prerequisites to become a very fascinating research project – if it is not one already. Leiden astronomers Melissa McClure, Harold Linnartz and Will Rocha…
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Measuring science communication impact
What tools can be applied to measure the output, outcome and impact of science communication efficiently and effectively?
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Assessments of Past Science
Is it possible to formulate a new conceptual foundation for attributing an evaluative role to historiography of science, without relinquishing the historiographic sensitivity of recent work in the discipline?
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Astronomers see whirlwind around possible exoplanet-in-the-making
An international team of astronomers led by researchers from the Leiden University has discovered a whirlwind of dust and pebbles in orbit around a young star. It is possible that a planet is forming in the pebbles. The team of scientists made the discovery during the time that designers and developers…
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CECILIA2050 - Optimal EU climate policy
Development of scenarios for 2050 detailed in an IO framework
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La Cetra Cornuta : the Horned Lyre of the Christian World
What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?
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The influence of music training in speech processing
In this project, we plan to combine two strands of research in speech processing: (a) the impact of prosody on speech processing and (b) the impact of musical training on speech processing. In our project we will test 8 year-old children with different degrees of musical training: (a) primary school…
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The amorphous 6-string
This research intents to redefine the limits of the electric guitar.
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Vokales Instrumentalspiel in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Die Aufführungspraxis italienischer Instrumentalmusik in der Auseinandersetzung mit Vokalmusik und Text: Quellen und moderne Umsetzung
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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…
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X-raying extragalactic gas: warm-hot gas in the EAGLE simulations
I have studied the hot, diffuse gas around and between galaxies. Specifically, I have used the EAGLE numerical simulations of galaxy formation to predict the properties of this gas, and I have used those properties to predict specific observables: soft X-ray absorption and emission lines.
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Identifying the origins of galaxy formation
This thesis investigates how galaxies form and what diversifies the evolutionary histories of galaxies.
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What tiny isotopes reveal about planets outside our solar system
Planets existing in other solar systems contain invaluable information about the origin of planets and life. PhD candidate Yapeng Zhang has studied their atmospheres by looking at their smallest parts: isotopes. With her research she hopes to discover what makes our own solar system unique.
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Mysterious ripples racing through planet-forming disk
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.
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Oxygen line opens new perspective on the far universe
A team of astronomers of Leiden University and the University of Texas (Austin, United States) has discovered a new way to map distant galaxies. They did so by observing the fingerprint of oxygen in a distant galaxy, something that is usually not possible from Earth. The researchers will publish their…