News
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Space telescope Euclid makes first test images - astronomers are full of anticipation 01 August 2023The two instruments of ESA's space telescope Euclid have taken their first test images. The first images indicate that the space telescope will achiev...
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What was there first? Water or planets? 28 July 2023Could water be present in planet-forming disks before the formation of rocky planets? The James Webb Space Telescope may have found evidence for that....
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Tracking the origin and evolution of molecules in space 28 July 2023How do molecules originate and evolve in space? And how does that ultimately determine the chemical composition of planets and their atmospheres? The ...
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After the launch of the next big space mission: ‘This is a big step towards understanding dark matter and dark energy.’ 07 July 2023What is it like to work on the fundamental questions about the universe? On July 1, the Euclid satellite launched successfully. This mission from the ...
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Sjoert van Velzen receives Vidi grant to solve 'riddles from the universe' 29 June 2023Minuscule elementary particles from space colliding with Earth can give us an insight into the distant objects they come from. But first, you need to ...
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Surprising molecule helps detect protoplanets 28 June 2023A team of scientists, including Leiden Astronomer Alice Booth, has discovered silicon monosulfide molecules in the dust disk around a young star. Such...
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Leiden PhD student discovers thin atmosphere on exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c with JWST 20 June 2023A group of astronomers led by Leiden PhD student Sebastian Zieba has discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that the rocky exoplanet T...
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What tiny isotopes reveal about planets outside our solar system 01 June 2023Planets existing in other solar systems contain invaluable information about the origin of planets and life. PhD candidate Yapeng Zhang has studied th...
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How do you recognise the atmosphere of extraterrestrial lava worlds? 23 May 2023In the past 30 years, over 5,000 planets have been discovered outside our solar system. One common exoplanet is the lava world, a hot super-Earth with...
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BlackGEM telescopes begin hunt for gravitational-wave sources 16 May 2023Three Dutch-Belgian telescopes have started operating at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile. This so-called BlackGEM array will scan the southern s...
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Astronomers spot benzene in planet-forming disk around star for first time 11 May 2023An international team of astronomers including Leiden professor Ewine van Dishoeck has observed the benzene molecule (C6H6) in a planet-forming disk a...
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Hunting for life’s building blocks at minus 250 degrees Celsius 02 May 2023Searching for life’s building blocks lightyears away is an important task of the James Webb Space Telescope. But how does it know what to look for? Ph...
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Astronomers see birth cluster of galaxies in early universe 30 March 2023An international team of astronomers has discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the cluster-in-formation around the Spiderweb Galaxy. Based partly...
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How the speed demons of the universe tell us something about the Milky Way 10 March 2023They hurtle along at over a thousand kilometres per second: the fastest stars in the Milky Way. PhD candidate Fraser Evans conducted research into the...
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Astronomers find missing link for origin of water in solar systems 08 March 2023An international team of astronomers, including astronomers from Leiden University, has found the missing link in the path taken by water through star...