The Masters program at Leiden University is split evenly between coursework and research. Students must complete 60 ECTS of courses in a range of fields, with some restrictions based on the choice of specialisation. There is still an emphasis on developing fundamental skills in physics and astronomy.
The remaining 60 ECTS are split into two separate research projects, one per year, with the second one becoming the thesis with an attached colloquium.
My first project was detecting hydrogen and carbon radio recombination lines within the W3 starforming region. We utilised data from two surveys of the region using different instruments, EBHIS (Effelsberg-Bonn HI Survey) and APERTIF (an upgrade to the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope), to determine the variation in large versus small scale emission from the W3 complex.
The second project was attempting to detect exoplanets using the TESS satellite and the MASCARA ground-based observatories. Thanks to the TESS alert website, we had the information for thousands of potential transit candidates requiring confirmation via follow-up observations. We attempted to determine MASCARA's (Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA) viability as such an instrument. To this end, we performed data reduction of the lightcurves from both objects, using the information given by TESS such as accurate values for period, to recover the transit signal within the MASCARA data. We also performed 10,000 transit simulations, which were then injected into real MASCARA data, in order to determine a family of "ideal" candidates for future follow-up observations with the instruments.