More than 60 member organizations of the KNVWS are established and active throughout the Netherlands. In addition, there are also independently operating organizations and individuals active in the field of meteorology and astronomy. Many of them participate to bring astronomy closer to the...
The time has finally come. On August 10, 2025, football club Telstar will play at the highest level again, the Eredivisie. It has taken 47 years for them to play top matches. The first match is immediately away against Ajax. In the 1977/78 Eredivisie season, it ended...
Asteroid Day (also known as International Asteroid Day) is an annual worldwide event held on June 30, when a meteorite impact destroyed a large forest in Siberia (Russia). Are you familiar with Wes Anderson's 2023 film: Asteroid City? In...
By pooling financial and intellectual resources, the ESA is able to realize projects that are unattainable for individual member states. ESA also works closely with European (DLR, NLR, CNES, etc.) and international space agencies (including NASA, Japan Aerospace...).
André Kuipers is an astronaut who works for ESA. He is the third astronaut after Lodewijk van den Berg and Wubbo Ockels and the second astronaut to go into space on behalf of the Netherlands after Wubbo Ockels. Kuipers' first spaceflight...
The European Space Agency (ESA) is engaged in projects within a European context in the fields of spaceflight, Earth research, space research, the development of satellite-based technologies, and the promotion of the European economy. ESA works closely with...
Leiden University was founded in 1575 and is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university has seven faculties (six in Leiden and one in The Hague), with 33.701 students enrolled in 2025. Whoever visits the Hortus Leiden can...
In Trouw of Saturday, September 21, a large article was published on page 13 with the title 'Thanks to his stamps, Erik Boeré knows everything about Nobel Prize winners and cattle breeds'. The subtitle is 'Stamp collecting is on the rise. With the...
The exhibition 'The Creation of Science' is on view at Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht until June 2, 2024. In my opinion, the quality of this exhibition ranks among the TOP 5 exhibitions of 2024. So don't miss it! Between...
A leap year is a calendar year with 366 days instead of 365. This extra day, a leap day, is introduced because a calendar year of 365 days is approximately 6 hours shorter than the tropical year. To prevent the seasons,...
Following on from the 'Respectful Consideration of Space' stamp (nvph 1475), graphic designer Lilian Vos (Vividblue agency from Amsterdam) fulfills the PostNL guiding principle of particularly innovative stamps with the 'Journey to the Moon' issue, in which the 'human-space' relationship...
First of all, thank you for the many stars at the bottom of my previous 349 blogs. My 350th blog is about real stars that you can see every day if you look up late at night: the starry sky. On September 25, 2022 between 22:00...
The order to design and manufacture a new American flag, even though it was never formally recorded, was given by a small committee in June 1776 consisting of George Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel George Ross. The order...
Every year, November 28 is 'Red Planet Day'. The day commemorates the launch of Mariner 4 on November 28, 1964. Mariner 4 was an American unmanned space mission to Mars in the 1960s. This flight...
After the wedding, many things accelerated for the then Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Máxima: three children, the succession to the throne, and state visits. Many countries issue stamps of the Royal House. This is a popular theme among philatelists as well. In...
'May the Force be with you' corresponds to May 4. Based on the English pronunciation of the date 'May the Fourth', May 4 was chosen by Star Wars fans worldwide to celebrate the holiday. The meaning of this...
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