Current research interests on active galaxies in Leiden cover a variety of topics. In connection with an ESO Key Project there is a search for very distant galaxies. Candidate galaxies are selected on the basis of radio properties and subsequently optical spectra are taken to determine redshifts. These observations are of extreme importance as they probe galaxies at a very early epoch and enable study of the evolutionary history of galaxies. Numerical hydrodynamics is used to model the physics of jets and energy transportation in radio galaxies.
Relativistic effects are important here and the calculations are correspondingly complicated.
Other projects include studies of the properties of radio galaxies in clusters.