On 18 June 2019, Neta Palkovitz Menashy defended her thesis 'Regulating a Revolution: Small Satellites and the Law of Outer Space'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. P.M.J. Mendes de Leon and Prof. dr. G. Molier.

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.

In this project we develop algorithms to automatically detect a particular type of archaeological sites in satellite images of the Alps.

On 17 December 2018, Dejian Kong defended his thesis 'Civil Liability for Damage caused by Global Navigation Satellite System'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. P.M.J. Mendes de Leon.

Dwarf satellite galaxies in the Milky Way perform different dances than researchers initially expected. Marius Cautun from Durham University received a Marie Curie grant to unravel the mysteries of this orbital dance. October 1st 2018 he will start his research at the Leiden Observatory.

PhD defence

Adrian Hamers is researching the way in which celestial bodies orbit each other, now and in the future. This often turns out to be more erratic than you might think. He will defend his PhD dissertation on 21 June.

Seagoing vessels may emit fewer and fewer harmful substances, but how do you measure whether they comply with the standards? The Dutch Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) and the universities of Leiden and Wageningen are starting a joint study to detect the emission of sulfur and nitrogen dioxide…

You can hardly avoid it if you want to quickly implement satellite internet. Elon Musk's company Starlink is

A team of Dutch and Scottish researchers led by Simon Portegies Zwart (Leiden University) has found an explanation for the chaotic behavior of the orbit of Halley's Comet. The findings are accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Researchers from Japan and the Netherlands who were previously involved in the discovery of an exoplanet with huge rings have now calculated that the giant rings may persist more than 100,000 years, as long as the rings orbit in the opposite direction to that of the planet around the star. Their findings…

Two black holes, in close orbit around each other. Have they slowly drifted together, or did they emerge from two orbiting stars? Together with to colleagues form Amsterdam, Leiden astronomer Simon Portegies Zwart calculated that the second scenario is rather likely.

The Tech, Business & Regulatory Industry Workshop is an annual event of the ECSL which began in Glasgow in 2016. The purpose of this interdisciplinary workshop is to bring together stakeholders from different aspects of the space industry to exchange on the technology, business and legal/regulatory…

Stars orbit black holes while jumping up and down. This is the prediction of a theoretical model developed by Leiden physicist Satish Kumar Saravanan, based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. He defends his PhD thesis on July 7th.

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.

For a number of years, two ‘boxes’ in the Canary Islands and Chile have been scouring the skies for exoplanets that orbit bright stars. PhD candidate Geert Jan Talens helped develop these ‘MASCARA’ telescopes and has made the first discoveries with them. Together with him, we answer the main questions…

Promotores: Prof.dr. S.J. Edixhoven, Prof.dr. E. Ullmo (University Paris-Sud)

Why is the swimming efficiency of the European eel higher than predicted?

The Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Leiden University has, together with its European partners, presented the new MULTIPLY platform, during a workshop at the European Space Agency (ESA). This platform makes it for the first time possible to combine different data stream’s of ESA’s newest…

Who shall be responsible or liable when damage is caused by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)? Is it fair enough to force a GNSS provider to bear the burden of compensation given GNSS open signals are provided free of charge? And are current international laws adequate to deal with those questions?…

In February 2023, the International Institute of Air and Space Law and the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum for International Humanitarian Law organised a seminar on the topic of 'The optimisation of the use of satellite information in the humanitarian domain – Legal and space-related developments' at Leiden…

This week an article was published in the American popular science magazine Scientific American on the uncertainty surrounding the extent to which territory can be claimed on the moon.

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

Electrons in a crystal lattice have properties that may differ from those of a free electron in vacuum.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Aarts, Prof.dr. J.M. van Ruitenbeek

Russia recently blew up a defect satellite. As a result, the amount of space debris in Earth orbit has increased.

Promotor: I. A. G. Snellen, Co-promotor: M. A. Kenworthy

Promotor: J.W. van Holten

The first fine for space debris has been issued. An American company that had failed to clean up its space junk has been fined $150.000.

PhD defence

Promotor: Bas Edixhoven, Promotor: Qing Liu

The thesis addresses the long-term dynamical evolution of hierarchical multiple systems.

PhD defence

Supervisor: S.F. Portegies Zwart Co-Supervisor: A.G.A. Brown

Promotor: Prof.dr. I.A.G. Snellen, C.U. Keller

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.

Quantum computers deserve their own quantum internet. This is a network that dispatches information not in the form of bits - ones and zeros - but rather as qubits, just like in the quantum computer itself. In the view of Dirk Bouwmeester, a professor in Leiden’s Quantum Matter & Optics research group,…

This thesis describes the development and validation of new high-contrast imaging techniques, with the ultimate goal of enabling the next generation of instruments for ELT-class telescopes to directly image Earth-like extra-solar planets orbiting around nearby stars.

Diverse types of exoplanets such as gas giants on close-in orbits (hot Jupiters) and young massive giants on wide orbits (super Jupiters), with no analogs in the Solar System, pose challenges but also opportunities to our understanding of planet formation and evolution.

Even though more than 4000 extra-solar planets are known today, only a small fraction of these has been captured in an image. To better understand the planet formation mechanisms in solar-like environments we started the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES).

Detecting planets during their formation stages is crucial for understanding the history and diversity of fully developed planetary systems like our own. However, observing young planets directly is challenging because they are often deeply embedded within their host protoplanetary discs, rich in gas…

This Saturday will be the first Kaiser Spring Lecture of this year! - A series of public lectures on Astronomy in the Old Observatory.

The International Institute of Air and Space Law, founded in 1985, collaborates with many world-class academic institutions.

Leiden University has participated in an international study carried out by the CARMENES consortium, which has discovered two small, terrestrial planets around Teegarden’s Star. The planets have masses similar to Earth and their temperatures could be mild enough to sustain liquid water on their surf…

The Wadi al Jizzi Archaeological Project is a systematic and long term archaeological surface survey project, investigating the rich archaeological heritage of the Wadi al Jizzi region (Oman) from the Paleolithic until the early Modern period.

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Prof.dr. C. Dominik (UvA)