AoT Leiden: Star & Planet Formation! (Leiden, in English)

Join us for a night of astronomy with two fantastic talks from Nienke van der Marel and Martijn van Gelder who will tell us all about the formation of stars and planets. As always, there will be fun games where you could win cool science prizes. The event will take place on Monday 25 April at Grand Café de Burcht (Burgsteeg 14, 2312 JS Leiden) at 20:00 CEST.

Nienke van der Marel: Planets under construction: how to study a million year process
Planets around other stars, also called exoplanets, are seen everywhere. In the last 25 years, thousands of exoplanets have been found throughout the Milky Way. How do we find these planets? What are the chances of discovering life there? And if they are so common, why is it that we still don't know how they are formed? With the ALMA telescope we can now finally zoom into the birth cradles of planets: dusty disks around young stars. The spectacular images have given us new insights, but also raised many more questions on the process of planet formation.

Martijn van Gelder: Observing complex molecules in the youngest forming stars
Martijn van Gelder is a final year PhD student at Leiden Observatory. In his work, he focuses on observations of the youngest forming stars. In particular, he uses advanced telescopes such as ALMA and, in the future, also the James Webb Space Telescope to study how complex molecules are formed in these young forming stars. In his talk, he will show how astronomers detect these complex molecules and what chemical complexity can be reached in these young protostars.

Logistical information
We start at 20:00 sharp, so please arrive earlier to enter the bar, save a seat, and grab a drink. We are not planning to stream the event live, but will be uploading a recording of the talks on our YouTube channel after the event. Register at https://aotleiden.eventbrite.nl/