The Old Observatory houses four historical telescopes. On this page you can learn more about them.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Leiden University Medical Center with Nagasaki University.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs with Fukushima University.

In this chapter, Kohei Suzuki aims to provide a brief overview of Japan’s local government system.

On Wednesday 3 September 2025 Yu Ai successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Our current research focusses on the exploration of the Universe using the neutrino. This neutral, almost massless and only weakly interacting particle can open a window to the distant Universe and also dense regions from which photons cannot escape.

Loneliness and social isolation have become a significant problem in contemporary Japan. The financial burden associated with an ageing population has severely constrained the ability of local authorities to address the problem. As a result, policymakers have sought cost‐effective methods of tackling…

This study aims to examine how South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and Japan, two neighboring countries in Northeast Asia, have been responding to and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

Rebecca Tompkins defended her thesis on 21 March 2019

Leiden-Yale collaboration uncovers a tale of samurai same-sex love in a library manuscript.

One of the ways of understanding another culture better is to examine what people experience when they read a text, or look at an image. Leiden experts have a lot of knowledge in this field, for example on culture in ancient Japan.

Andrew Littlejohn published the article 'Ruins for the future: Critical allegory and disaster governance in post-tsunami Japan' in American Ethnologist about the ruins left by Japan's 2011 tsunami.

On 1 September 2022 Afke van Ewijk successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Ruobin Han defended her thesis on 21 March 2017

On the 28th of September Go Hirasawa successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts Volume 87 in the series Religion and Society

Large telescopes can look so deep into the Universe that they can also look back billions of years in time. From 2018, the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be able to see the period just after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies formed. Astronomers…

Cutting-edge technological innovation for businesses and consumers, enabled by top-tier research on space and the quantum world.

The Hague Diplomacy Podcast aims at bringing the themes of the journal's research off the page, and onto the discussion table. Each episode will feature a guest who will share their insights and personal experience within their practice of or research on diplomacy. Available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts…

After nearly 70 years, the Leiden Observatory has a new telescope. A crowdfunding action in March brought in the 20,000 euros required to build a solar telescope. On 19 September Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker officiated at the opening.

Attitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused…

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

The Maker Space in Huizinga 0.11f is a creative environment where students and researchers can access a professional 3D scanner, 3D printer, and a camera-based scanning system for high-quality text and image digitisation.

This thesis mainly extends the theory of positive operators on Riesz spaces to a setting of pre-Riesz spaces.

This research studies the future perspectives for Malaysian space law. It aims at demonstrating the development of Malaysian outer space activities inclusive of her status with respect to United Nations space conventions and her membership of international and regional space-related organizations.

Much of the literature on space diplomacy houses a Western precedent through the use of mainstream ideas of IR to emphasise space...

A delegation from Leiden University will be visiting several Japanese universities and research institutions from 18 to 26 November to discuss research and teaching collaborations.

One of the key discoveries in exoplanet research over the past decade is the abundance of small planets in our Milky Way. Despite their high numbers, our understanding of their atmospheres remains limited, and it is unknown if they possess atmospheres at all.

Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) have been detected in objects across different stages of stellar evolution.

University Library, Witte Singel 27, 2311 BG, Leiden

Promotor: A. Doelman, Co-promotor: M.F.E. de Jeu

After 25 years, December will finally see the launch of the long-awaited James Webb space telescope. Leiden astronomers are watching with great excitement: not only were they involved in the construction of important instruments on board, the telescope will also reveal many new secrets of the universe,…

BplusC Libraries and Old Observatory Leiden working together to provide telescopes

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel, Co-promotor: S.C. Hille

Leiden scientists will be working on the development of a camera for the European Extremely Large Telescope that is currently under construction. On 28 September the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy signed an agreement with the European Southern Observatory.

This research focuses on the distribution of chemical elements in protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planets. These disks form around young stars and contain gas and dust, from which planets grow. Ice plays a crucial role in planet formation, aiding the clumping of dust particles and influencing…

A delegation from Leiden University visited various universities in Japan at the end of March. The strong ties between the Netherlands and Japan are still based on a long tradition of knowledge exchange.

Our Advanced Master Air and Space Law (LL.M.) combines public air law, private air law and space law from a European and an international perspective.

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, Co-promotores: Dr. Y.H.Choi, N.R. Mustafa

Here you will find an overview of the Spaces for Active Teaching and Learning already implemented at Leiden University and LUMC. These rooms vary in size, location, material affordances, and technological affordances, and thus vary in the forms of pedagogy they best support. You can use this site as…

How are night spaces imagined, produced, experienced and narrated by migrant communities in Europe? This research project considers this question in eight European cities: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam. Authorities have historically wrestled with the issue of night-time…

The International Institute of Air and Space Law is one of the leading international academic research and teaching institutes in the world, specialising in legal and policy issues regarding aviation and space activities in the broadest sense of the word.

The design for the METIS instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is final. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has given the green light for production of all parts of the instrument. It is the first ELT instrument, designed and to be built under Dutch leadership, to formally pass the…

After 25 years, this December will finally see the launch of the long-awaited James Webb space telescope (JWST). Leiden astronomers are watching with great excitement: not only were they involved in the construction of important instruments on board, but the telescope will also reveal many new secrets…