AoT Leiden, Monday 30th July @ Grand Café de Burcht

Our next edition will take place on Monday 30th of July at 20h in Grand Cafe De Burcht (Burgsteeg 14, 2312 JS Leiden). Join us for an evening of informal astronomy and great beer! Jorryt Matthee and Aayush Saxena will take us into a journey back in time, to the early universe!

Jorryt Matthee is a graduate student at Leiden Observatory. His research aims at answering the question “where do we come from?”, focusing on the very early history of the Universe: the cosmic dawn. While it is not possible to travel back in time to view the formation of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, Jorryt studies how other similar galaxies looked using observations of the most distant galaxies and by tracking the growth of realistic galaxies simulated in large computer simulations. In this talk, he will present what he recently learned from a sample of surprisingly bright galaxies at a distance of 13 billion light year that he found in old, archival images. New, detailed observations of these galaxies provide hints of the properties of the first stars and on the formation of massive black holes that lurk inside galaxies.

Aayush Saxena is a a PhD student at Leiden Observatory who is studying far away radio galaxies, both observationally and theoretically. One of the key questions he wants to address through his research is how distant galaxies assembled their mass in such a short time after the Big Bang, and what are the physical processes that power their radio emission. In his talk, he will briefly outline the rich and fascinating history of studying the sky at radio wavelengths, how studying radio galaxies has taught us so much about the evolution of the Universe and how it can be used to address several current open questions in astronomy.

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!