From the birth of the universe to the molecules in a planet's atmosphere. The first five pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show the enormous range in which the space telescope can operate. Ewine van Dishoeck, professor of molecular astrophysics, took a look at the first images Tuesday…

Dusted off and fresh from the field, some insight perspectives on the 2012 field season of the Proyecto Arqueologico Centro de Nicaragua. It's safe to summarize the field campaign as having generated some insights, and possible answers, many more contacts, and the occasional frustration for added bo…

Former Leiden Observatory PhD candidate Danna Qasim has won no less than two prestigious prizes with her thesis, titled 'Dark ice chemistry in interstellar clouds'. Qasim received the IAU PhD Prize from the IAU. The Astrochemistry Subdivision of the American Chemical Society (ACS) honoured her work…

The life cycle of comets near the star Beta Pictoris is similar to that of comets in our own solar system. This is the conclusion of a team of astronomers from the Netherlands, France and Brazil. It seems that, just like in our own solar system, there are fewer comets as the star gets older. The researchers,…

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…

Sander Blok has won the third edition of the annual LION Image Award. He created a colorful image of gold nanoparticles with a low-energy electron microscope.

Amino acids are the building blocks for life on earth. They may originate in space and reach the Earth via comets and meteorites. Daniël Paardekooper examined part of this hypothesis. PhD defence on 5 July.

Five promising researchers at Leiden's Faculty of Science have received a Veni award from NWO. They can use the award - of up to 250,000 euros - to carry out research over a three-year period. Of the total of seventeen Leiden Venis, four went to Leiden Observatory and one to Institute for Biology Le…

On Friday evening 17 September, Leiden astronomer Joe Callingham can be seen in a new series on Discovery channel. Killers of the Cosmos is about different deadly dangers lurking in the depths of space. Asteroids, cosmic debris, electromagnetic weapons… The show takes a film-noir approach to these threats,…

The Biotech Training Facility (BTF) on the Leiden Bio Science Park is now officially open. Professionals and students can practise their skills and learn new competences in the field of life sciences in this fully equipped training centre with laboratories, clean rooms and technical areas.

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After 25 years, December will finally see the launch of the long-awaited James Webb space telescope. Leiden astronomers are watching with great excitement: not only were they involved in the construction of important instruments on board, the telescope will also reveal many new secrets of the universe,…

It is theoretically possible that habitable planets exist around pulsars, rotating neutron stars. Such planets must have an enormous atmosphere that convert the deadly X-rays and high energy particles of the pulsar into heat. That is stated in a scientific paper by astronomers Alessandro Patruno and…

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to six Leiden researchers. It awards these significant grants to established principal investigators for ground-breaking, high-risk research.

During the ‘intelligent lockdown’ in the Netherlands this spring, the respondents in a Leiden study reported a mild increase in their stress levels. This extra stress could have a negative effect on families, particularly if parents already had psychological problems before the corona crisis.

When professor Frank Israel graduated at Leiden Observatory some forty years ago, little did he know that one of his theories would be making headlines in 2018 - in the form of a 3D animation on the Internet, no less.

A team of laboratory astrophysicists from Leiden University managed to make glycerol under conditions comparable to those in dark interstellar clouds. They allowed carbon monoxide ice to react with hydrogen atoms at minus 250 degrees Celsius. The researchers publish their findings in the Astrophysical…

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.

Physicists, including Leiden researcher, Sanli Faes, have devised a new technique for studying processes at microscale rapidly and extremely precisely. This new method will make it easier to develop antiviral medication. And it doesn’t stop there. Publication in ACS Nano.

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.

A moon rock from the Apollo 17 mission, antique globes and the cosmos according to Wassily Kandinsky. Ewine van Dishoeck, Professor of Molecular Astrophysics, has put together an impressive exhibition at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave.

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…

Scientists are asking your help to find the origin of hundreds of thousands of galaxies that have been discovered by the largest radio telescope ever built: LOFAR. Where do these mysterious objects, which extend for thousands of light-years, come from? A new citizen science project called LOFAR Radio…

How are stars and planets formed? Is life outside Earth possible? These questions are being researched by Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck at Leiden University. Her pioneering work has earned her the Kavli prize in the category of astrophysics. The prize consists of 1,000,000 dollars…

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.

An international team of researchers led by Alice Booth (Leiden University, the Netherlands) have discovered methanol in the warm part of a planet-forming disk. The methanol cannot have been produced there and must have originated in the cold gas clouds from which the star and the disk formed. Thus,…

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.'

After almost twenty years the record for the most distant radio galaxy has been broken. A team of astronomers led by Leiden PhD candidate Aayush Saxena has discovered a radio galaxy from the time when the universe was just one billion years old. The galaxy is at a distance of 12 billion light years…

The alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope is complete. The space observatory is able to capture sharp, well-directed images with each of its four powerful scientific instruments on board. The MIRI instrument, on which Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck also worked, was the…

For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star. The discovery reaffirms that the conditions that spawned the Earth and Sun are not unique in the Universe. The results are published…

In a new series we talk to past and present students who were the first in their family to go to university. In this first instalment: novelist and columnist Christiaan Weijts (1976). ‘I always felt as though someone would tap me on my shoulder once they’d discovered my clandestine presence.’

How big is the universe? How do stars form and evolve? And does life exist elsewhere in the Universe? These main questions in astronomy are the themes of the new exhibition Above & Beyond, which was created in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The exhibition…

The centre of our Galaxy is so dark and dense that it is almost impossible to observe what is inside. By catching the rare hypervelocity stars that are ejected from it, Elena Maria Rossi aims to unveil the mysterious environment around the supermassive black hole inside. But she’ll also be solving another…

It was not until 1878 that the first female students enrolled at Leiden University, but the discussion on whether women were suited to study was by no means over. 8 March is International Women's Day. BBC correspondente Kim Ghattas will deliver a lecture on 6 March on the struggle by Arabic women for…

The world is becoming increasingly digitised, and the information one has easy access to is often rather overwhelming. In particular, the accumulative nature of the archaeological practice has resulted in huge quantities of data being produced. But how to prevent these from becoming dust-collectors…

After almost 18 months of following lectures alone in their rooms, many students are going back to face-to-face classes for the first time. And the same is true for the lecturers. How do people feel about it? We went to Leiden Law School to find out. ‘For a whole year, I’ve been watching lectures in…

At the New Year’s reception of the Faculty of Science on 6 January, it was announced that Annelien Zweemer, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, has been awarded the ‘Discoverer of the Year 2014’ prize. Matteo Brogi, Leiden Observatory, wrote the best dissertation in 2014 and Dennis Claessen, Institute…

Astronomers from the Leiden Observatory and from the University of Rochester (in the US) have discovered that the planetary ring system that covered the very young sun-like star J1407 is actually of enormous proportions. In fact, it’s much larger and heavier than the ring system surrounding Saturn.…

Tahir Abbas was named full professor of radicalization studies by the Executive Board. This chair, according to Abbas, is an excellent opportunity for ISGA to broaden its current focus on terrorism and political violence. Abbas was interviewed about his ambitions, writing as a form of relaxation, and…

NASA’s telescope SOFIA has provided a new glimpse of the chemistry in the inner region surrounding massive young stars where future planets could begin to form. Leiden PhD candidate Andrew Barr writes about it in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists found massive quantities of water and organic…

A night sky of more than 40 petabytes in size, simulating young star clusters and understanding how the body inhibits viruses: three Leiden projects have received computing time on one of the national computer systems.

Over the last 5-6 years Burkina Faso has become seriously implicated in the rapid and dramatic changes in the geopolitical situation in the Sahel. The country, once reputed for its stability and safety, has come under the spotlight for the number of violent attacks and of internally displaced people.…

Leiden during corona, loneliness in the elderly or making the city more sustainable. Students from Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences are working with the Municipality of Leiden on solutions to societal problems. How is this benefitting society? And where is there room for i…

Over the past few hundreds of years, the world has changed radically. However, cultural stereotypes from the 17th century are still alive and well today, and even academic researchers sometimes use terms coined centuries ago. Why do they do that? Herman Paul, Professor of the History of the Humanities,…

Using mathematics as a weapon against desertification. With this subject, Robbin Bastiaansen managed to win the C.J. Kok Jury Prize 2019, the prize for the best dissertation of the Faculty of Science that year. Nine months later, we speak to him about this prize. How does he look back on it?

Today, ESA’s Gaia mission releases its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers, led by the Leiden astronomer Anthony Brown, describe strange ‘starquakes’, stellar DNA, asymmetric motions and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date.

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…

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