Astronomy on Tap: Dark matter & exoplanets (Leiden, in het Engels)

The monthly meeting Astronomy on Tap Leiden will be at Monday 28 September in Grand Café De Burcht. Speakers are Sebastiaan Zoutendijk: "Dark matter in the smallest galaxies" and Matthew Kenworthy: "Two distant wanderers: how to take pictures of planets around other stars".

Sebastiaan Zoutendijk: "Dark matter in the smallest galaxies"
Bas Zoutendijk is a PhD student at Leiden Observatory. He studies the fundamental properties of the Universe through observations with telescopes. He is currently working on a better understanding of dark matter. This substance is a very abundant and important part of the Universe, but its nature remains a mystery. In this talk, Bas will tell how astronomers use the smallest galaxies to shed light on dark matter.

Matthew Kenworthy: "Two distant wanderers: how to take pictures of planets around other stars"
Matthew Kenworthy is an associate professor at the Leiden Observatory. He has spent over a decade looking for planets around other stars, has found comets orbiting other stars and giant ring systems casting shadows through the galaxy. Thousands of planets have been discovered around stars other than our Sun - but we've only taken pictures of barely a dozen of them. In his talk, Matthew will talk about how they take pictures of planets around other stars, and how they found not one but two planets orbiting around a very young version of our Sun, and what they hope to learn in next few decades by taking pictures of planets with bigger and bigger telescopes.

It's a free event, but registration is required due to COVID-19 regulations.