Our next event will take place on Monday 29th of April at 20h in Grand Cafe De Burcht (Burgsteeg 14, 2312 JS Leiden). Join us for an evening of informal astronomy and great beer! Paul van der Werf and Huib van Langevelde will tell us about the most dark & dusty mysteries of the Universe!
Paul van der Werf is a Professor of Astronomy at Leiden Observatory, and is fascinated most of all by the question why the Universe exists. Since this question is far too difficult to answer, he spends most of his time on things we can actually hope to understand, in particular the violent dust-obscured growth of galaxies and their nuclei, objects that are much more extreme than anything we find in our own Milky Way. He will take us on a journey through the most obscured regions of the Universe.
Huib van Langevelde is employed in Dwingeloo at the JIVE, the European centre that supports Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and is also a professor for Galactic Radio Astronomy at Leiden Observatory. With VLBI astronomers can make radio observations with extremely high resolution, zooming in on the most energetic sources in the Universe, such as active galaxies. It is suspected that these galaxies and their powerful jets are powered by supermassive black holes at their centres. Recently the existence of black holes has been constrained with fundamental observations. This talk will be discussing how these monsters look when observed with VLBI observations at millimeter wavelengths.
All ages and backgrounds welcome! The entry is free and no reservation is needed. We start at 20h but recommend you arrive early to save a seat and grab a drink. And of course, beside the talks, we will have fun games where you can win cool science prizes! More info: check out www.astronomyontap.nl!