LELYSTAD (ANP) - De koning en zijn familieleden vieren Koningsdag volgend jaar in Lelystad, meldt de Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst maandag. Dit jaar was de koninklijke familie in het Friese Dokkum voor de nationale viering van de verjaardag van koning Willem-Alexander.
BRUSSEL (ANP) - De Nederlandse Europarlementariër Reinier van Lanschot (Volt) roept samen met collega's de Europese deelnemers aan de NAVO-top op deze week te besluiten tot de oprichting van een Europese Veiligheidsraad. Die raad moet sneller politieke besluiten kunnen nemen over de verdediging van Europa, zo staat in een oproep van Volt en Europarlementariërs van de centrumrechtse EVP, de sociaaldemocraten (S&D), de liberale Renew en de Groenen.
De Europese Veiligheidsraad moet een aanvulling worden op de NAVO.
Deze Europarlementariërs pleiten in een maandag uitgebrachte verklaring ook voor een geïntegreerde Europese commandostructuur. Ze willen daarnaast dat de EU-lidstaten samen defensiemateriaal inkopen, onderhouden en inzetten.
"De NAVO zal niet overleven als Europeanen simpelweg meer (Amerikaanse) wapens kopen. Europa moet een aanvulling vormen op de Amerikaanse capaciteiten die de alliantie bijeenhouden. Met twee zelfstandige pijlers zal de NAVO sterker worden", aldus de verklaring.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (Buitenlandse Handel, D66) begint dinsdag met zeventien Nederlandse bedrijven een drie dagen durende handelsmissie in China. Hij werd als Kamerlid vijf jaar geleden nog door Beijing op een sanctielijst geplaatst vanwege onder meer zijn kritiek op mensenrechtenschendingen in China.
Sjoerdsma sprak in maart met de Chinese minister van Handel, Wang Wentao, tijdens een ministeriële conferentie van de Wereldhandelsorganisatie (WTO) in Kameroen. Daar werd duidelijk dat hij welkom is in China. Hij kondigde toen ook de handelsmissie aan, de eerste naar China sinds 2018.
"We hebben de afgelopen decennia een sterke handelsrelatie opgebouwd. Ons doel is om met dit bezoek de bilaterale handelsrelatie tussen Nederland en China verder te versterken. Het bespreken van zorgpunten hoort daarbij", aldus Sjoerdsma.
Nexperia
In China staat dinsdag opnieuw een gesprek met Wang Wentao op de agenda. De handelsrelatie met China liep vorig jaar een deuk op toen het kabinet ingreep bij chipmaker Nexperia. Die ruzie lijkt intussen enigszins geluwd, maar is nog steeds niet opgelost.
In Beijing zal ook gesproken worden over ASML dat ook meegaat op de handelsmissie. Een conceptwetsvoorstel van het Amerikaanse Congres wil de export van chiptechnologie van partnerlanden naar China verder beperken. Het kabinet keert zich tegen dat voorstel dat ook onderhoud wil verbieden.
360 miljard euro
Nederlandse bedrijven hebben vorig jaar minder naar China uitgevoerd, terwijl de import van Chinese goederen wel toenam. Er gingen minder gespecialiseerde machines en halfgeleiders naar China, aldus het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS).
China dumpt goedkope producten in Europa, is al langer de klacht. Het handelsoverschot van China met de EU was vorig jaar 360 miljard euro. Eurocommissaris Maroš Šefčovič (Handel) zei eind vorige maand tegen Wang Wentao dat hierin verandering moet komen.
Brussel zegt niet te schromen maatregelen te nemen als het overleg niets oplevert. De vraag is of het zover gaat komen. De economieën zijn nauw verweven. Daarbij komt ook nog eens dat de EU sterk afhankelijk is van China als het gaat om verduurzaming en kritieke grondstoffen.
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This graphic shows the location of the 31 newly discovered quasars (yellow dots) by the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope, and the mission’s survey footprint in August 2025 (blue area). The locations of the farthest found quasars are shown as red dots. The farthest quasar is the one on the right and is named EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 (redshift of 7.77), and the second-farthest (the red dot on the left) is named EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 (redshift of 7.69).
This all-sky view is overlaid on ESA Planck’s map from 2014, with the bright horizontal band corresponding to the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, where most of its stars reside.
[Image description: An oval image showing a projection of the night sky with the bright plane of our Milky Way galaxy running horizontally through the centre. Cloud-like features representing stars and interstellar gas and dust extend above and below the plane. Some regions are marked in blue, indicating Euclid’s survey footprint in August 2025. In these regions, yellow an red dots show the locations of the quasars.]
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Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/Planck Collaboration/A. Mellinger; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Acknowledgment: Jean-Charles Cuillandre, João Dinis
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This collage shows 15 of the 31 newly discovered quasars by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope, with their names and redshift (z). Click on their names to zoom in.
Two of these giant, dazzling, black hole-powered galaxy cores are older than any we’ve seen before. These are visible on the first row, the first and second from the left.
The farthest quasar is named EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 (redshift of 7.77), and the second-farthest is named EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 (redshift of 7.69).
These cosmic elders shone with the light of a trillion Suns back when the Universe was 670 million years old – just 5% of its current age.
[Image description: This collage with observations of the Euclid space telescope shows a grid of small, dark panels filled with tiny points and faint smudges of light. The lights vary in brightness and colour, including white, blue, yellow, and orange, with some appearing as dots and others as slightly blurred shapes. Each panel has a small label with letters and numbers at the bottom.]
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Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by the Euclid Science Ground Segment and Antoine Basset (CNES); CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
In today’s Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope we are taken on a visit to a building site of significant scale. The project is a galaxy cluster named MACS J0553.4-3342, located in the constellation Columba (the Dove).
MACS J0553.4-3342 is situated at a redshift of 0.412. Redshift is a measure of how much the cluster’s light has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe over the course of its long journey to Webb’s mirrors; this unassuming number tells us that we are seeing MACS J0553.4-3342 as it was 4.4 billion years in the past. But for a galaxy cluster, this is relatively young. In fact, observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes show a cluster still in the process of being built.
MACS J0553.4-3342 is composed of two sub-clusters — roughly equal in mass — that are actively merging. The two subclusters have already slammed through each other and travelled over one million light-years apart, but they will eventually come back together again and again until they finally merge. The construction process is messy, and MACS J0553.4-3342 is filled with extremely hot gas that radiates powerful X-rays. Each subcluster is anchored on an immensely bright and massive elliptical galaxy, which are easily identifiable as the two brightest points in the centre of this scene with the largest glowing halos around them. The many smaller white elliptical galaxies are bound to one of the two subclusters by gravity, and will be incorporated into the final galaxy cluster. This image also features many foreground galaxies — spirals and dusty discs that are unrelated to MACS J0553.4-3342 — and prominent bright stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Even mid-way through its construction, the titanic clumps of matter swirling around in this galaxy cluster have built a device that is already very useful for us here on Earth: a gravitational lens. The extreme and concentrated mass in MACS J0553.4-3342 curves light with its gravity, similar to how a glass lens bends and focuses light. In this image you can see prominent orange, stretched-out arcs alongside each of the subclusters. These arcs are images of distant background galaxies, whose light has been warped by the galaxy cluster’s gravitational pull. The arc on the left side, three bright spots joined together, is actually three images of a single background galaxy! A forest of smaller arcs and lines are scattered across the image too; such a fantastic view appears in few other places in the Universe.
Look in the right spot, however, and this galaxy cluster turns from a distorting funhouse mirror into a precision scientific device. The gravitational lensing focuses light, magnifying objects and enhancing their brightness so if they lie in exactly the right place, background galaxies and even individual stars that would have been far too faint and distant to spot will be made visible. By carefully mapping out the mass of the cluster, researchers can reconstruct where and how strongly it distorts light from our point of view, then search for serendipitously-magnified distant objects to study. The arcs we can see in MACS J0553.4-3342 already show a few galaxies from less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
This image, taken with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), stems from a survey programme named VENUS (#6882). Astronomers aimed to create a collection of deep, high-quality images of massive galaxy clusters like MACS J0553.4-3342 across a wide range of infrared wavelengths, greatly expanding the area covered by Webb’s sensitive instruments. Researchers can then scour the clusters for distant and faint objects that have been brightened through gravitational lensing, from young galaxies and low-mass black holes to supernova explosions and individual stars. Gravitational lensing has been key to many of Webb’s most dramatic discoveries in recent years, and having many more examples of it allows us to systematically study the distant past and the evolutionary stages of the galaxies, stars and black holes we see today.
[Image Description: A galaxy cluster in deep space. It is filled with elliptical galaxies: small, bright white glowing ovals. The two largest elliptical galaxies, left and right of center, are bright cores that radiate light. Unrelated, distant galaxies are scattered around as red smudges and dots.Many of these are stretched out into red arcs and lines by the galaxy cluster’s strong gravity, creating multiple images in places. Numerous spiral galaxies and bright stars appear in the foreground.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, S. Fujimoto; CC BY 4.0
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This artist’s impression depicts the structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA's Gaia and illustrates how scientists have revised the position of its outer arms thanks to observations from ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra.
The two X-ray telescopes have spotted the aftermath of three bright cosmic explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy. By measuring the distance to these echoes, a research team found that the outer arms are up to 10% further away than we thought.
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[Image description: An artist’s impression of what our home galaxy, the Milky Way, might look like face-on, as viewed from above the disc of the galaxy, with its spiral arms and bulge in full view. In the centre of the galaxy, the bulge shines as a hazy oval, emitting a faint golden gleam. Starting at the central bulge, several glistening spiral arms coil outwards, creating a circle-shaped spiral. The position of the Sun is indicated as a small yellow dot within the spiral. Two sets of two lines roughly trace the extremities of the outer arms labelled ‘Outer Arm’ and ‘Outer Scutum-Centaurus Arm’, drawing four arcs. In each set, a magenta line traces the newly determined position of the outer arm by XMM-Newton and Chandra; on the inside of the magenta arc, a white dashed arc traces the position of that arm derived from older estimates.]
Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar, ESA/XMM-Newton and NASA/Chandra; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope captures the infrared light from bright protostars in the young star system FS Tau.
In addition to myriad background galaxies that burst into view, this image flickers with a number of protostars, or baby stars that are formed from dense pockets of gas and dust. These hot, clumpy, and low-mass objects eventually will become full-fledged stars capable of burning hydrogen in their cores, like our Sun. The protostars of FS Tau are about 1 to 3 million years old, which is relatively young in cosmic scales. Our Sun, by contrast, is 4.6 billion years old.
FS Tau A, a pair of protostars that creates the largest diffraction pattern slightly to the left of centre, is about half the mass of our Sun. FS Tau B, the orange protostar slightly right of centre, is thought to be responsible for the red (molecular hydrogen) and orange (soot-like molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) outflows that we see amid the dusty region. The blue ridges are areas where light has been scattered by dust.
The different colours of the background galaxies indicate how much dust is in front of them, as dust both absorbs and scatters light. Redder galaxies lie behind larger amounts of dust, yellower galaxies lie behind thinner layers of dust, and whiter galaxies are mostly unobstructed.
You can learn more about this image here.
[Image description: FS Tau, a star-forming nebula. Clouds of transparent blue and purple gas and dust extend from slightly left of centre to the right side of the frame, from 2 o’clock to 5 o’clock. Several yellow and white protostars, some showing Webb’s eight-pronged diffraction pattern are dispersed throughout the clouds. Orange wisps and filaments of gas extend from one of the protostars at the centre toward the top left and bottom right corners of the frame. There are numerous, distant yellow and white galaxies strewn about the black background of space.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI); CC BY 4.0